Data logging in Excel?

[lrob]

My functionality in Excel is limited, however Iam currently looking at options for recording data in my plant. I can get real time information to Excel, I just dont know if I can use Excel to histrically save this information into retrievable files?

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

lrob:

Once the data has been imported into Excel, would you not just save the workbook in native Excel format (*.xls)? Other options are text (comma or tab delimited), etc....

 

[bltseattle]

I don't understand the question.

I've used excel for numerous hydrology studies, which is data intensive. A primary consideration is the limit in the number or rows for a worksheet (65536 rows for Excel2002), which you need to compare to the number of data points you will be dumping to the spreadsheet.

For example, if you were to collect a data reading every second you would only be able to accomodate 18.2 hours of data per worksheet.

Also, Excel is probably more of a memory hog than just dumping data to an ASCII text file.

Good luck!

 

[lrob]

Thanks for all the response. I do not know how to create and dump data into an ASCII file. Can I bring the data into Excel and dump it from there on an interval? Would I be better off using a different program?

 

[analogkid2digitalman]

lrob:

Need more details on your application to assist.

By what means is data transferred to PC- serial port, etc?

How do you currently get the real time data into Excel?

What is the format of the data in terms of charaters, bytes, termination characters, etc?

 

[bltseattle]

Check with the data logger manufacturer, many provide software support. FOr example, there's a program called BoxCar that works with HOBO data loggers...