Planning with Integrated Excel

Planning with Integrated Excel

Use

For planning with integrated Excel, Microsoft Excel is used as a planning screen for your planning data in the R/3 System. This allows you to combine the comfort of Excel's formatting and data processing functions with the powerful planning functions of your R/3 application. You are able, therefore, to use the Office input interface with online planning in the R/3 System.

There are two ways of using Excel to plan your data:

Planning with Excel integrated into the user interface of the R/3 System

Excel replaces the standard R/3 planning screen. This enables you to plan using the functions of both R/3 and Excel.

Offline planning in Excel and uploading data into the R/3 System

From one or more PCs that are not connected to R/3, you can enter your planning data in several Excel spreadsheets. This data can then be uploaded into the R/3 System, where you can process it further using the R/3 planning functions.

Prerequisites

Software

To be able to plan using integrated Excel, the following should be installed on your PC:

The Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 95 operating system
Microsoft Excel 97
SAPGUI (32-Bit), at least Rel. 4.5

Hardware

To ensure good response times, your PC should have a Pentium II processor and 64 MB RAM.

Features

In Customizing, you can define Excel spreadsheets for use as templates in planning. In those templates, you can move data around, insert graphics, define macros, and format text and cells. You can use this template to plan with integrated Excel or to plan with the upload function.

Link between Excel and R/3

From the technical point of view, Excel is called up by the R/3 System using OLE (Object Linking and Embedding), an interface in the Office programs. Integrated Excel into R/3 allows you to use the same Excel functions that are available with the integration of Excel in Word, for example.

On a more detailed level, the link between the Excel spreadsheet and the R/3 planning layout is created above the position of the data in the Excel spreadsheet:
The R/3 System uses Customizing to determine which R/3 data is in Excel and where it can be found. The position of the data cannot be changed in the planning screen so that the data can be imported correctly. The fields of the planning layout are mapped to the Excel spreadsheet using file description

Limitations

You cannot use integrated Excel to enter any planning data in the period screen.

With integrated Excel, you can only use those planning layouts whose lead columns were defined as a whole by selecting a characteristic. If the individual rows of the lead columns in a planning layout were defined with different characteristics, value fields or formulas, you cannot use this planning layout with Excel.

Activities

Setup

To be able to use Microsoft Excel as your planning screen, you need to activate the indicator integrated Excel in Customizing for your application when you assign your planning layouts to a planner profile.

There you can also enter default parameters for the layout and design an Excel spreadsheet to be used as a template for planning in Excel.

For more information about setting up integrated Excel, see Setting Up Integrated Excel.

Planning in Excel

Excel integrated in the R/3 window

To plan directly in the R/3 System using integrated Excel, you need to work with a planner profile in which Excel was activated as the planning screen for one or more layouts. You enter your planning data in Excel, and can use Excel functions such as macros or diagrams as well as all the usual R/3 planning functions. For more information on planning with integrated Excel, see Planning in Integrated Excel.

Planning in Excel and uploading data into the R/3 System

The Excel template created in Customizing can be copied as often as required and used to create planning data in Excel. By using the uploading function for Excel, you can transfer the individual files into the R/3 system. This means that planning data can be entered into different PCs, local planning thereby being possible. For more information on the required procedure, see Planning Offline and Uploading into R/3.