Setting Up Integrated Excel 

Prerequisites

Your Planning Layouts must be defined. Each planning layout may only contain lead columns that have been defined as whole entities and not row by row.

If you want to change a planning layout for which you have already created an Excel template, you must create a new Excel template.

For technical reasons, it is necessary that the system already contains planning data that corresponds to the planning layout (at least one row) before an Excel spreadsheet can be formatted as a template. If no such data is present in the system, you then need to create some. One way of doing this is by entering data into the appropriate layout without integrated Excel.

Procedure

Activating Excel

When you define your planner profile, select Integrated Excel on the screen where you assign planning layouts to the profile. This activates Excel as the planning tool for that layout in that planner profile. When you enter planning, the system displays the planning layout you defined in the upper left-hand corner of an Excel spreadsheet.

At this point, you can enter a specific name for the file description. This makes sense, for example, in cases where you intend to use the file description several times. If you do not enter anything here, the system automatically creates a file description when you save your planner profiles. This file description will reflect the position in the profile.

If you want to customize a spreadsheet for use with that layout in planning, you need to do this in the planner profile by choosing the Overview icon on the Default Parameters screen (see "Defining an Excel Template").

If you want to upload Excel spreadsheets, you also need to make additions settings (see "Settings for Uploading").

Defining an Excel Template

1. Choose Default Parameters and enter values for the variables defined in the planning layout. You must do this so that you can open the spreadsheet in the next step. If desired, you can delete these entries again after you have customized your Excel template.

2. To open Excel in the R/3 window, choose Goto ® Overview screen .

3. Now you can customize an Excel spreadsheet as a template for your planning screen.

Note the following:

? To move planning data within the spreadsheet, only use the appropriate R/3 function. To do this, select the data you want to move using the function Edit ® Select in the R/3 menu, and then position the cursor on the target location and choose Edit ® Move. You save the link between the old position and the new position of the data by choosing Save file description .

 The first Excel spreadsheet is protected. Cells that were not locked against entries in the R/3 entry screen, such as those that can be defined in the planning layout, are excluded from this protection in Excel. If you want to use functions in Excel that extend beyond editing those cells where entries can be made, you first need to remove the general spreadsheet protection in Excel.

After editing, you should then reactivate the spreadsheet protection in Excel to ensure that, for subsequent planning, the only data that can be entered corresponds to that specified in R/3.

? You can use the Excel formatting functions (such as different fonts or colors) to format the Excel template.

 You can use Excel to create diagrams, macros and formulas and then use these for additional calculations, for example. It is recommended that you insert these into a second spreadsheet to avoid the data conflicting with the actual R/3 planning data later. The R/3 planning data is imported from the first spreadsheet only.

 When you enter formulas in the R/3 data area in Excel, they are overwritten by the formula result during posting, and the formulas themselves are then discarded.

 You can save the Excel formatting in R/3 by choosing Save Excel layout.

4. If you later want to upload files from your PC to the R/3 System, you must enter a generic file name (see "Settings for Uploading").

5. Choose Save all. This function will also save the file description and the Excel template.

Data saved with this function is permanent from then on.

6. Return to the Default Parameters screen by choosing File description ® Exit. Delete any values you entered for the variables if you do not want to have them displayed as the template in planning. Choose Save.

The default parameters are only saved temporarily at this point.

7. Finally, save your planner profiles.

The system only assigns a file description to the planning layout after the planning profile has been saved. The values for the variables are saved permanently.

Settings for Uploading

If you later want to upload files from your PC to the R/3 System, you must enter a generic file name . This name must consist of a string of characters, an asterisk (*), and the file suffix ".TXT" (example: PLNG*.TXT).

When you later upload Excel files into the R/3 System, this generic file name links the file on your local PC to the file description.

The name ranges of the various generic file names cannot overlap, because this would mean that the assignment of file name to file description would not be unique. For example, if you assigned the generic file name PLAN*.TXT to one file description and PLANS*.TXT to another, file PLANS03.TXT would not be uniquely assigned.

For an overview of all file descriptions together with the generic file names, you can call up the program RKCDPREO with the ABAP Editor for the ABAP Workbench. From the list drawn up by the program, you can delete any file descriptions and generic file names that are no longer used.