Edit Report File


Edit Report File

The Edit Report File command begins a report file edit session by prompting you, with a standard file dialog box, for the name of a report file to edit. If you choose a valid file name, it opens a pre-configured editor which allows you to view the report file.

Note: The editor selected in "Options... System Options... Format" determines the program that will be used when you execute the Edit Report File command. You can set this to any program of your choice. It is defaulted to "c:\windows\write.exe". You could put in the path to Excel if it was available (e.g. "C:\Microsoft Office\Office\Excel.exe").




This allows you to open an ASCII file from a spreadsheet program, and in a matter of minutes, create information-packed plots and charts that quantitatively describe the trip. This extremely useful application is possible because all data files can be rendered in spreadsheet-compatible ASCII text format.

Opening a report file into a spreadsheet results in each numeric field and label having its own column. Therefore, you can easily select specific columns to use.

Graphs can be created that show plots of speed versus time. Just as easily, you can perform detailed calculations against the data, like predicting fuel consumption or calculating accumulated distance traveled.

Of course, you can use a word processor to edit and condition report file data. RASTRAC has been tailored to provide easy export of program databases to allow operations like those discussed here. Rather than attempting to do everything from within the program, RASTRAC instead allows you to use data processing applications with which you are familiar, and which are well suited to such tasks.