PLEASE NOTE: This documentation applies to Pentaho 8.1 and earlier. For Pentaho 8.2 and later, see Microsoft Excel Input on the Pentaho Enterprise Edition documentation site.

Description

Collection of Excel Input Step tips, tricks, comments, gotchas, and capabilities.

Useful forum threads as of 2/15/2008

each-Sheet-to-own-table
http://forums.pentaho.org/showthread.php?t=57204&highlight=excel+input

sample kettle API code for excel input
http://forums.pentaho.org/showthread.php?t=58933&highlight=excel+input

col/row as variables

http://forums.pentaho.org/showthread.php?t=58717&highlight=excel+input

protected file
http://forums.pentaho.org/showthread.php?t=56662&highlight=excel+input

Number to Date Conversion

(example: 20051028 > October 28th, 2005) you should simply specify the conversion mask yyyyMMdd because there will be an implicit Number to String conversion taking place before doing the String to Date conversion. source: Spoon 3.0 user manual

Metadata Injection Support

You can use the Metadata Injection supported fields with ETL Metadata Injection step to pass metadata to your transformation at runtime. The following Option and Value fields of the Microsoft Excel Input step support metadata injection:

Options: File and Directory, Regular Expression, Exclude Regular Expression, Selected Files, Accept Filenames from Previous Steps, and Show Filenames
Values: Name, Type, Length, Precision, Trim Type, Format, Currency, Decimal, and Grouping