Over the course of the 30 Days to Become a Better Monarch Modeler series we’ve learned how to positively fill Monarch with actionable data. We’ve morphed reports that had content that was cast in stone into dynamic and practically living data that is now free to tell its once concealed story.
But all great stories need an audience, so today on day 17 of the series we’ll find ways to spread the story by exporting from Monarch with every means at our disposal. This particular story starts with the Export Wizard toolbar button…
Report Your Report
When the Export Wizard is launched, the first choice is to decide from which of the three Monarch windows you want to use as the basis for the export.
When the Report window is selected, we can use one of the following file types:
- Adobe PDF (.pdf), the standard Portable Document Format now commonly used to share documents.
- Portable Report Format (.prf), Monarch’s proprietary format used to distribute the original report and other Monarch features in a single package.
- Fixed-length text (.txt), which creates a plain text file that uses spaces to pad the lines so that the output matches what is currently displayed in the Report window.
Depending which format you choose, the Wizard gives you different options for your next decision.
If you’ve selected to output a PDF file, you’re presented with options with which to customize the PDF file:
- Do you want the file to be secure? The user will have to supply a password of your choosing just to view the file.
- How tightly do you want to control the use of the file? You can grant or deny the ability to print the file, extract content from it, edit it, or add comments to it.
- If you password protect the file, which level of encryption do you wish to apply?
For PRF files, you can choose whether to include the Tree Index, the model itself, and whether you want to encrypt the file (and optionally apply a password if you do), and what level of file compression that you’d like to apply.
There are no additional options for fixed-length text files.
Select * From Table
Things get more interesting when choosing to export from the Table window when you’re using Monarch v10.
You can take advantage the filters that you’ve built to create customized exports. You can ignore the filters and export everything, or you can apply any individual filter by name, or (this can be a great one) use all of the filters in the model. If you do choose to apply all of the filters, you have an additional choice to export each filtered data set to its own separate file, or to create different tables within a single export file so that each filtered set will create a unique table.
If you have defined custom sort orders, you can apply one of them in the export.
Next, you select the file format to create with the export. The numerous options include:
- Lotus 1-2-3 (.wk3) file
- “Classic” Excel (.xls) and Excel 2007 (.xlsx and .xlsm)
- Paradox (db)
- Fixed-length text (*.txt)
- Delimited text (*)
- Access database formats (.mdb and the 2007 format .accdb)
- dBase (.dbf)
- Adobe PDF (.pdf) and even
- Web pages (.htm and .html)
My first paying job required my building dBase and 1-2-3 files. To think that I can still use recently released software to create those formats… I never would have believed it back then.
The fixed-length text format and the PDF format offer the same options as described for the Report window exports and most of the other files have limited, functional if somewhat mundane options. The notable exception is the Excel 2007 format.
When exporting to .xlsx or .xlsm files, you have another multitude of powerful choices:
- If you’re planning to add VBA code, or you just want to essentially certify that you created that file, Monarch can add a digital signature to the export automatically.
- Excel’s auto-filter feature can be activated in the file.
- The feature recently added to Monarch, context, which allows you to attach the source report(s) to the file so that auditors and others can track data origins without your assistance.
- Finally, you can easily add a pivot table to the file by selecting which fields to use for each element of the pivot table. There are a number of ways to further customize this aspect of the export. We’ll probably further discuss Monarch’s pivot table creation in detail one day soon.
Conclusive Summaries
Monarch offers the same file types when exporting summaries as it does for exporting from the Table window, but some different options are available.
You can elect to export the summary in its most detailed form, regardless of its current onscreen presentation, or to export it as is.
There’s an additional option that can save you a ton of effort. For summaries that have multiple values in the first key field, you can elect to either create a new file, or a new table within a single file, for each different value for that key. So for a summary based on customer names, you could create a multiple exports using a single summary, and each export would represent information for only a single customer. How do you typically build your summaries, and how will this impact how you handle some of your work?
Well, that rounds out the basic exporting functionality that Monarch offers.
Your Task for Today
Odds are that you’ve got your favorite export formats and frequently use those same formats for all of your work. Spend some time today creating exports by using the other available formats.
Additionally, and more importantly, think about how you could overcome some pure modeling challenges that you may have encountered – you know those reports that you can’t seem to model properly no matter what approach you try – by using an export file as input file to somehow assist with modeling the original report.
Finally, think about what sorts of layouts work best for you for sharing certain data types, and for certain purposes. Which layout would make it easy for you to whip up some great Excel charts? Which would make that task more difficult? Monarch offers you the freedom to make your work as simple or as complex as you choose. You can learn to choose wisely, but at times it takes some practice. Start today.
Become a Storyteller
Sometimes exporting is just a means to an end when your aim is to simply populate one information system with data from another. But at other times, you’ve got a great opportunity to craft a tale and unlock the truth that’s hiding in that voluminous report.
The next great story need not be found at a bookstore; it could be what you create when you excel with Monarch.
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Continue your commitment to Become a Better Monarch Modeler with Part 18 of the series, or review Part 16.
