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Pasting data vs DDE

Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 4:57 pm
by jsc
David,
I can dde a chunk of data from Excel that looks like this:

count on-load off-load
178 179 <nul>
444 <nul> 266
638 194 <nul>
776 <nul> 138
877 101 <nul>
1009 <nul> 132

Where "<nul>" is just an empty cell.

So I have an XYY data structure, but with alternating data, if you will.

Using DDE, this goes into DPlot without difficulty.

Using copy and paste, even though the data looks correctly displayed in the paste special dialog box, DPlot turns it into one XY series, not two series.

Furthermore, in Excel, if I copy then paste just the X and the first, adjacent Y column, the plot in DPlot is all jumbled. Looks like X and Y get transposed.

Am I doing something wrong? (Or should I read some instructions?)

Thanks.
Jon

PS: I appologize if I seem to be in the high maintenance mode right now. I guess I do this with a new program, ie, feeling it out for what I can and can't do, until I learn its quirks or limitations.

Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 6:33 pm
by DPlotAdmin
Copy/Paste won't work well for this. DPlot only examines clipboard data in text format. That's assuming text format is available; if it isn't, Paste will be disabled. There's not enough information in text format to tell what's what in your example. Excel does export data in other formats that preserve more information, I've just never got around to supporting those formats. This became less important to me after publishing the Add-In, which is superior to Copy/Paste in several ways, this being one of them.

I'll add support for Excel's BIFF... umm... "binary interchange file format" clipboard format sooner or later, but it is a low priority since the Add-In will already do most anything Copy/Paste will, and do it better.

Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 3:06 pm
by jsc
Thanks for the reply and clarification. So I won't try to copy and paste anymore!