Elements of Report Files

A typical aPriori spreadsheet report consists of:

• an XML (.xml) file that defines the data to be extracted from aPriori.

• an optional Excel template file (.xls or .xlsx or .xlsm) that defines how the data should be formatted.

• an Excel output file containing the extracted data (the actual "report").

Note that if no Excel template file exists, then the data will be dumped into the Excel output file with no formatting. For small reports, this may be sufficient. But more likely you will need to format the data with a template file to make the report usable.

You can format your spreadsheet report with Excel PivotTables® for advanced formatting. And you can choose not to create a spreadsheet at all and instead dump out your data into a CSV (comma-separated values) file or an XML file.

The data that you can extract from aPriori are generally variables that are defined as part of the aPriori software, or defined by a VPE creator as a custom output.