Attempting to place an input value into another programme

[nonanona]

what i am trying to do is put a value such as a string value and put that into another programme such as office/adbobe after it has been entered, so basically

string a;

int main()
{
	cout
		<< "enter anything"
		<< endl;

	cin
		>> a;

    return 0;
}

where i want the string value 'a' to be typed into another application (microsoft office).

*note
don't have a clue what to type into google to get an answer to this, a simple link to a source (website/video)which explains the solution would also surfice.

thank you.

[Handy Andy]

Hello nonanona,

You have a nice idea, but I believe you will find it difficult to edit Microsoft Office files with out an understanding of how those files work. These are not file you can just edit outside of the program that they are designed for.

In a similar topic dealing with Excel files this link was given that you may find useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#File_formats

You could write a program that would create a file that Excel could use to create a spread sheet. That is about as close as you are likely to get unless other Office programs have a way to input a text file.

Hope that helps,

Andy

[AbstractionAnon]

One way to interact with another Windows application is to use Microsoft's COM interface.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms690343(v=vs.85).aspx

[nonanona]

Thanks Handy Andy
Yeah that is basically exactly what i want to do, but i never worked that well with excel (mainly due to the design of the documents which it producesbut i thiink what i am trying to acheive with this programme can be achieved through the use of excel instead of word.
do you know of any tutorials that give more of an explanation into making a Programme that incorporates the use of an excell programme?

[Handy Andy]

Hello nonanona,

I do not know of any tutorials out there because I bought a book or looked up specific key words or functions when I needed something. Microsoft has a programming language called VBA to work with Excel and Word. They look like programs or scripts, but Microsoft calls them macros.

I would imagine that there is something that would help.

Recently, within the last two months, I did see a post here dealing with a VBA macro using a C++ program to work with an Excel spread sheet.

Something you could do is from Excel save the workbook as a ".csv" file that can be read be a C++ program. And in reverse a C++ program can create a ".csv" file that Excel can read and make a spread sheet from.

Not exactly sure what you want to do. These are just some thoughts I had.

Hope that helps,

Andy

[Thomas1965]

What you need to do is use FindWindow to get a handle to the window where the text should go and then use SetWindowText to set the text of the window.
There is an example for Notepad, maybe you can adapt it.
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/windows/49488/

[jonnin]

excel is HIGHLY programmable via macros, vs scripting, formula, and more. It has some aggravations like changing your data for you via guesswork, but it is powerful.

what do you need to do exactly?

there are 3 main approaches.
1) solve the problem directly in excel.
2) solve the problem in another language like c++ and export that to excel via csv. Csv can store formulas in the cells, by the way.
3) use a library like microsoft's tools to have a mini-excel sheet in a windows GUI program that mixes approach 1 and 2.

and one more approach.. excel and sql and databases can all work together, so a final approach is if your data is in a database you can do some of the work there and some in excel.

There are other things you can do but those 3 come up a LOT.