Proposal for Native Microsoft Excel Export and Printing in FET

[Alami mohammed]

Dear Mr. Liviu,

First of all, I would like to thank you once again for your continuous efforts in developing FET. It is an outstanding and highly reliable timetabling software that has become an essential tool for many educational institutions around the world.

I would like to suggest a feature that I believe would be extremely useful for many FET users: native Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) export and printing.

Currently, FET provides excellent output formats such as HTML and PDF, which are very useful. However, many schools and administrators still rely heavily on Microsoft Excel to review, customize, format, and print timetables before distributing them.

Therefore, I suggest adding Excel (.xlsx) as an additional output format alongside HTML and PDF.

Ideally, this option could be integrated directly into both:

the Timetable View window,

and the Print/Export window,


where the user could simply choose the desired output format:

HTML

PDF

Excel (.xlsx)


The generated Excel files could preserve the current timetable layout, including merged cells, colors, borders, fonts, and page formatting as much as possible, making them immediately ready for printing or further editing.

This feature would provide several important advantages:

Allow users to make final formatting adjustments directly in Excel.

Simplify the preparation of printed timetables according to each institution's preferences.

Enable easy integration with existing Excel-based administrative workflows.

Save users a significant amount of time, since many currently convert HTML files into Excel manually.


I believe that native Excel export would be a valuable addition to FET and would be appreciated by a large number of users worldwide, especially in educational institutions where Excel is the standard tool for document preparation.

Thank you once again for your excellent work and for your dedication to continuously improving FET.

With my highest respect and best regards,

Mohammed Alami

[Volker Dirr]

Thank you for suggestion. Not easy without support.

I guess it will be possible for teachers, rooms and subgroups timetables as long as there is only a single activity per html cell. It will be difficult (impossible?!) as soon as there are more then 1 activity in an html cell; like in groups and years timetables. So it will be hard/difficult to convert that into Excel.

Maybe you can also add some more words how to export the many timetable variants that FET supports. I guess each html file as an Excel file. But in a single file are a lot of tables. All tables into a single sheet OR each single table into an own sheet? How to care about cell with more than 1 activity?

[Liviu Lalescu]

Dear Mr. Mohammed,

Thank you for your kind words!

I'll add your words in the TODO.

But: We prefer to promote the use of free software.

[Alami mohammed]

Dear Mr. Liviu and Mr. Volker,

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

To clarify my suggestion, I think the export feature could initially be limited to Teachers, Rooms, and Students (Groups/Subgroups) timetables, since these usually contain a single activity per cell.

The user could choose the timetable type to export, just as in the current Print Preview window.

Instead of creating many worksheets, each exported spreadsheet could contain a single timetable sheet with a drop-down list at the top, allowing the user to select the teacher, room, or student group to display. The timetable would update automatically according to the selected item.

A similar approach is used in the EDT4FET application, where a selection field allows the user to choose the timetable to display.

Regarding the output format, I fully understand FET's preference for free software. Therefore, I believe that supporting OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) would be an excellent choice, while .xlsx could remain an optional format for users who need Microsoft Office compatibility.

Thank you again for your excellent work and for considering this suggestion.

With best regards,

Mohammed Alami

[Volker Dirr]

Sadly groups timetables have in most countries/schools more then a single activity per cell.

So max teachers, rooms and subgroups is "possible" (even those can also have multiple activities in a single cell).

I might code it, but it is a big task and I can't see big advantages for it. Out of my personal view it is even unneeded. It is easier and even more flexible to modify the html tables. You can simply add text before and after the tables, so that you can even print a nice letter for each timetable, even if cells contains more than a single activity.
I guess I need at least one week full time coding for this, but probably even more. So if anyone or several guys donate me for that work, then I might try code that.

So if anyone want to donate me for that task, you can use my paypal account ( see www.timetabling.de ). Please add comment "export spread sheet" so that I know why you sent me money.

[Volker Dirr]

hmm... I read about variants how to make it. There are different variants:

All sheet programs (like Excel, LibreOffice sheet) are difficult. They do not support several activities in a single cell. So the structure of the table must be changes or you can export only single activities in a cell. The first one is a very big task (I fear much more then 2 weeks full time work), the second one is easier, but it will be impossible to improve that code if sheet software doesn't support that feature.

What about LibreOffice Writer or Word? Is that also "ok" for your task? That software supports tables in tabels. That will probably easier to code. I just tried the default Qt exportfilter for odt documents. Easy too implement, but sadly also buggy and tables are wrong :-( Qt won't update that soon. It is a feature that was introduce many years ago already, and many guys complained already about the incorrect output for more complex documents. But the Qt guys will not fix it, since it is a much too large project for to less guys that need this feature.

So there are 2 variants left:
1. Export it with a library that support Libre Offcie Writer output. Sadly all libraries that I found doesn't support several activities in a single cell. So this doesn't work also.

2. Write an own LibreOffice Writer output. ... Hmm... I read about it. I think I can do that, but I am pretty sure that I need at least also 2 weeks or more full time coding.

[Volker Dirr]

I just played some more and tried to import.
I must admit, that I have currently only a 2,5 years old LibreOffice version. I will update my OS in 2 weeks and retry with LibreOffice (since I read they improved the import filter).

Result: Possible to import, but it looks a bit ugly.

But then I tried with Google docs. Import into Google docs is possible and very nice. See attached picture. (But you need to know how to do it, since there a 2 small tricks needed how to do it. It will look ugly if you just copy and paste.)

I don't have Word at home, so I can't test that.

So if you need a nice Google docs import, I can explain it.

@Liviu: One of the needed tricks is to save the css style not as an extra file, but place it in the html head. Advantage: Better import possible by other software. Disadvantage: More memory on hard disk needed. That is bad for guys that want to publish it with html.
What do you think? Should be make it optional to add the style in the html head instead of a css file?

[Liviu Lalescu]

All right, Volker, we'll consider this option for the future. As you recommended to me by email, a Settings check box, "Include CSS in HTML files".

[fetviewer]

Hi Alami mohammed,

I am not fully sure if it helps your case but as a temporary solution, if you upload & import the activities csv file to fetviewer.com , there is a built in option to print & view teachers, students, rooms timetables. Even existing filter tabs could be used to print multiple teachers or student groups timetables to find available slots for any kind of events & meetings. (In case it may help for printing purposes.) New full fet file support is also coming soon.



You can see a interactive demo here as well.

And this is a short video about the fetviewer.com

Good luck with your case and thanks to Liviu and Volker for this amazing tool.
Best

[Liviu Lalescu]

Thank you for your kind words, fetviewer! Good luck also to you and your tool!