Post HTML form to Excel file on PocketPC?

Joseph_Sliker

Sorry, this is way out there...not php at all really. Feel free to shoo me away to a more appropriate site/forum...but youse folks are soooo helpful here 😃

Anyway. The PocketPC version of Excel does not create forms, but HTML pages work pretty well. I'm trying to build an HTML form that can be opened on the Pocket PC that will post (or get, as needs be) any data entered (using fancy controls like checkboxes, radio buttons, etc) to a pocket excel file on the same PocketPC. I'd like it to insert new rows into the existing spreadsheet...not just overwrite the file or produce other files.

(I already have done php forms that save to a MySQL database when there is wireless available...but the current project is for a more common situation where wireless would not be available and the user would have to sync/email the file to me from an internet-connected computer.)

Any nudges in the right direction would be appreciated. Thanks!

etully

The real question here isn't whether or not you can make an HTML form post to Excel.
The real question is whether or not any external control can target Excel and I suspect the answer is yes (though I have happily been Windows free for four years so I am proud to say that I have no clue about the answer to this question).

If you can get Visual Basic to speak to Excel or if Excel has some sort of API where you can pass in commands like this: "Row 10, Column 4 = 123", then you're half way there.

The next step would be to get the data from your form (in a web browser, I presume) into the hands of Visual Basic. If they can speak directly to eachother, great. If not, you might need to write data to a flatfile (web form writes, VB reads it, deletes it, and sends it to Excel). Or maybe a database would be a commonly shared point between the form and VB.

So there's your model. As for that minor issue of getting it to work, all I can suggest is a good book that specifically addresses an Excel API and communication methods between applications. I suspect VB might be that glue but I don't know.

Joseph_Sliker

Thanks very much for the nudge. I've been learning to do this programming stuff from somewhere in the middle/by the seat of my pants and lack grounding in a lot of basic terms. For Example:

What's an API?

Thanks.

etully

Google is your friend