[Sephiroth]

I am trying to make a database out of CSVs obtained from a game's dat parsing. But I am having problems understanding the structure of the files.

I can see how it all links in, but I get cells such as:

Favors: [@SHEET(xtx/text_skillName,30,14)]

Favors: is just general text, but the reference links to a CSV called txt_text_skillName and then row 30, column 14 in that sheet. These aren't the physical rows/column in the sheet, they're based on reference numbers in column A and row 1. This value is then pulled into that reference above.

Obviously you can't pull in data in a CSV, but converting the CSV to Excel format didn't pull in the data either. Workbooks are linked together differently. Is that reference of any use to Excel or is there a way I can use it elsewhere? The dat parser manages to link everything together in the GUI so it must be possible to use it in programming. It would help if I understood what kind of referencing that is, but Google is giving me no luck.

I was just going to get around it by doing a find and replace on each reference but there's potentially hundreds of different ones.

[Dez]

Excel does allow you to reference different sheets in a workbook, or even a sheet in a different workbook. The syntax to reference a sheet is quite easy:

=Sheet1!A1

I'm not sure what the syntax for a different workbook is, but you can probably Google it. If your conversion program is naming the sheets properly, then you should be able to do a find/replace on those references to turn them into useful Excel formulae.

[Joinedup]

I think you could do it with macros... Forgotten how though

[Sephiroth]

I just took the easy route and put some replaces in my PHP code. It works for the item database but might need to come up with another solution if I decide to make a quest database.

I run a MMO fan site incase you're wondering. :P