wk1 files, between a rock and a hard spot

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Marty - 09 Jan 2008 16:50 GMT

By the subject you may be able to tell that I am not pleased...
Here is my situation: We have an old but very useable program that
exports information out into a wk1 file.
I had a program that I had developed a couple years ago that would
open these files through Excel. This allowed me to grab specific
information that would then in turn be used in some AutoCAD drawings.
Well my nice shiny new computer with it's nice shiny new Office suite
just killed it! Excel does not support this format any more (something
to do with security issues so I can't blame them.)
So outside of going back to my old system and using that I decided I
would give it go to extract the data directly from the wk1 file
myself. Easier said than done, I am not finding anything on how I can
go about doing this. I am not a computer science engineer so my brain
is limited in the information department.
I would be pleased if anyone would be willing to share information on
this file format and maybe any past experience working with it.

Thanks,
Marty

PS. Yes I am looking into replacing the old program but that will take
time also. I need a solution in the interim.

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Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP] - 09 Jan 2008 17:17 GMT

Marty,

Well, I've found the file format documentation here:

http://www.schnarff.com/file-formats/index.html#lotus

The wk1 extension corresponds to Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.0, so you will
have to keep that in mind while going through this.

If you decide not to parse apart the file, then you probably should look
for a third-party solution to do this. I did a google search for "wk1 file
parser" and came up with a few hits.

You ^might^ be able to get away with using the Jet 4.0 driver for OleDb
(and using the classes in the System.Data.OleDb namespace) to access the
data. The following is an example from Knowledge Base article 326548:

cnn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" & _
"Data Source=c:\somepath\Lotus123File.wk3;" & _
"Extended Properties=Lotus WK3;"

I assume you would substitute WK3 with WK1 where you see it.

Or, if there is an ODBC driver or other OLEDB driver that you can find
that uses this, then you could use that, and then export your data into a
format that is easier to consume.

Signature

- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- mvp@spam.guard.caspershouse.com

> By the subject you may be able to tell that I am not pleased...
> Here is my situation: We have an old but very useable program that
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
> PS. Yes I am looking into replacing the old program but that will take
> time also. I need a solution in the interim.

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Arne Vajhøj - 10 Jan 2008 02:46 GMT

> By the subject you may be able to tell that I am not pleased...
> Here is my situation: We have an old but very useable program that
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> I would be pleased if anyone would be willing to share information on
> this file format and maybe any past experience working with it.

I have some C code (from the time when CGI scripts was the hottest
web technology !) that can read WKS format - or at least some
of it.

Drop me an email if you want a copy of that C code.

Arne

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wk1 files, between a rock and a hard spot

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