Quattro Pro to Excel Conversion

Factual Questions
1

One of the problems with having had a computer for 20 years is all the legacy files you acquire.

I have a lot of data in Word Perfect’s spreadsheet, Quattro Pro. It had an easy menu selection under Data called Notebook Query. This would extract data out of a large spreadsheet that matched certain values and put the extracted data wherever you wanted it.

For example:



Color     Size     Shape
red        big      round
red        small    round
blue       big      square
red        small    round

If you wanted just the big objects, you could match Size to big and come out with:



Color     Size     Shape
red        big       round
blue       big       square

This seems like a basic function. But I can’t find any equivalent in Excel. Googling comes up with a similar graybeard asking the same question and getting some youth who didn’t understand the question and so gave a useless answer. {Typical. :rolleyes: } :slight_smile:

Anyway, any chance that somebody here knows the answer or can point me to it? (PivotTables baffle me, so I hope that not the answer.)

2

You mean something like Autofilter?

3

Yes, just go pick the column with the selection field, click Data, Filter, AutoFilter, then use the drop down menu to select what you want.

4

That’s close, but I want something that will leave the original as is rather than hide unused lines. When I originally looked at Autofilter it didn’t appear to do that and the linked page doesn’t show that either. I suppose I could copy and paste the filtered data, though.

5

As far as I know Excel does not support queries - it alters the appearance of the datasheet aas opposed to cfreating a new one based on your parameters. Is this what you’re asking or am I off base?

As you said you could always copy the results to a new sheet or different section of the current sheet.

6

There’s also Advanced Filter, which has a “Copy to another location” option.

7

Aha. That seems to be the closest equivalent, except for the no blank rows part. Thanks.

8

This may seem like a stupid question, but if you have Quattro Pro from your older computers, why don’t you just install it on your current box? There’s no rule against having more than one spreadsheet app on the same computer. In fact, I’ve got Quattro Pro, Lotus 123, and Excel, and I’m not even a PC user (I’ve got VirtualPC).

(The Mac is far less blessed with spreadsheet programs, but I’ve got a boatload of MacOS word processors)

9

I still use Quattro Pro for my home spreadsheets. Even the older version I have (8.0) beats the snot out of Excel XP. I recently saw that version 12 is available and am tempted to upgrade. Does anyone else have this and does it still run rings around Excel?