Excellence, version 1.20

overview
This is a Total Commander Lister plugin which displays text and numbers from spreadsheet files created by OpenOffice Calc, Microsoft Excel, Gnumeric, KSpread and similar programs.

installation
Before you install the new version, you must remove the old version. I'm sorry, but it is necessary or the plugin will not load newly supported file types.
Procedure >>

One way is to open Configuration menu, then to Options, Plugins, then fourth button (Configure); find Excellence in the list and remove it. Another way is to open wincmd.ini and find excellence in [ListerPlugins] section; it is sufficient to remove the "detect string". Actually it is ok to remove the detect string after the installation. That will tell commander to request a new one.
After that, it is time to install the new version...

If you have TC version 6.50 or newer, please use automatic installation feature (hit enter on excellence.zip).
Installation on older versions >>
If you have TC from version 5.51 to 6.03a, open Configuration menu, choose Options and open the Edit/View page. Click on Configure internal viewer, then on LS-Plugins and then on Add. Find the excellence.wlx file and add it to the list. Close all dialogs.
If you have TC 5.50 then add these two lines to the [ListerPlugins] section of the wincmd.ini file:
123=somepath\excellence.wlx
123_detect=""

then replace the number (123) with next available number and set path to plugin location.

disclaimer
I do not promise this plugin will properly read any type of data from any spreadsheet. In fact, I'm pretty sure it won't. If you encounter an error (plugin displays incorrect data, ignores a file or crashes) please send me an e-mail describing symptoms and I will try to fix that. If the document is reasonably small, please include it as well.
All names mentioned in this document are property of their respective owners.

keyboard shortcuts
Ctrl+C copy cell or range of cells to clipboard
Ctrl+A select entire grid; unused areas will not be copied
W increase column width to fit the text
F choose font
Ctrl+Tab or Tab display next sheet
Ctrl+Shift+Tab display previous sheet
Ctrl+F search for text
F3 find next occurrence
Default keys for cursor movement and selection are also supported, as well as Lister's default keys ( N, P, 1-9 and Esc ). You can double-click a column header to resize that column. When in Quick View panel, use ] and [   (square brackets) to cycle through sheets as Tab key will not be available.

non-english characters
In order to properly display unicode characters (cyrillic, extended latin and other), unicode font must be selected. If the plugin does not detect one itself, use an option from the popup menu to choose it. For documents saved with older versions of excel, you should choose a non-unicode font and a code page in which the document was created.

text search
Search function is present, and it now works as you would expect it to work. To search for non-english text in tc older then version 7, the plugin needs to display its own dialog box. To invoke that, you must enter --- (three dashes) into Lister's standard search dialog. Search options should be chosen in the second dialog.
Aside from Edit menu, search can be started with Ctrl+F or F7 (Find) and F3 or F5 (Find next). Use these to start a search in Quick View panel.

faq
Q: The plugin doesn't display far-eastern text properly. What do I do?
A: Try changing the font (hit F key). If that doesn't help, sorry. Please e-mail me and it might work in the next version. Be sure to include the document, the font it was made with and screenshot of the document opened with default application.
Q: What if a cell contents is calculated by a macro?
A: It will not be read or executed. Macro sheets in Excel documents will not be read at all, even if they contain normal data.
Q: What if a document contains a macro virus?
A: Then use this lovely plugin to safely read the file and copy its data to clipboard. After that, erase the file.

credits
This plugin uses SciZipFile unit by Patrik Spanel and SimpleXML unit created by Michael Vlasov.
I would like to thank everyone who provided translations for the plugin or sent suggestions and feedback.

the end
To get the latest version of this plugin, visit http://sites.google.com/site/ivansdump/.
Feel free to send any comments, suggestions or complaints to ivan5rovic@gmail.com. Bug reports are most welcome.

 

Ivan Petrovic