Leica Biosystems LPC Software installation - Manual (Page 164)

164 Software Installation Manual, Revision 2 - 03/2010
Data Files
Before you can send data from an Excel file to the cassette printer, you must
create a file with the data to be printed. XLTags extracts information from
this file and prints it one record at a time. XLTags can read files of two types:
comma-delimited text files (preferred) and Microsoft Excel spreadsheet
files.
Comma-Delimited Text Files
XLTags natively uses plain text files, where each line of text represents a
cassette to be printed. The fields on the cassette are separated in the text
file with a comma character. Every line of text in the file must contain the
exact same number of fields. You may use any of several methods for creat-
ing this type of file including Notepad or another text editor (do not use
Word or WordPad unless you save the file as plain text.) You can also cre-
ate the file with Microsoft Excel and save it as comma-delimited CSV format
as discussed below. The file extension for this type of file is .CSV or .TXT.
Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Files
XLTags also has a limited ability to read Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.XLS)
files. The spreadsheet must be designed to use only a single workbook and
must not include formulas, functions or any other non-text data. Each col-
umn in the spreadsheet represents a field of data, and each row represents
a record (one cassette.) If the spreadsheet contains special features, or is
excessively large, XLTags may take a very long time to read it, or it may
hang while trying. Because of this, we recommend that you save your
spreadsheet as a CSV (comma-delimited) format.
File Format
Regardless of how you create the data file, its format is very important for
XLTags to function properly. As previously stated, each line of text in the
data file represents one cassette and each field within that line represents
a data to be printed. However, XLTags treats the first field within the record
differently from the others. The LabeLase® printer can print an unlimited
number of fields of text on a cassette. Each field, also, has no limit on the
number of characters it may contain. However, the cassette geometry itself
may place restrictions on the maximum number of characters for any given
3. User Interface