[GNC] Exporting reports to spreadsheet

[Michael or Penny Novack]

> When I Export a report I've been supplying a windows extension of 
> ".ods". Which I assumed would cause that exported report file to open 
> in some OpenDocumentSpreadsheet application, in my case: LibreOffice 
> Calc.
>
> But it doesn't do that. I double-click the file to open it in the 
> default application and it opens in LibreOffice Writer. 


Important!  There is a common misconception that the file extension you 
supply (or have an application supply) when you save a file actually 
changes the format of the data. This is not so (except that an 
application might do that sort of data conversion as part of the save). 
All a file extension does is inform the system what application to use 
if you "click the object" (select it for opening).

You CAN use a different application by starting that and then telling it 
to open the file. For example, if you "clicked" on a file that had an 
extension .exe your computer would RUN this program. But if you started 
a hex editor and told IT to open this program is would let you look at 
it (examine the machine code) --- a hex editor can open ANYTHING.

You changed the extension from .html to that of an open document format 
but that didn't make the data itself change. But the LibreOffice suite 
does work differently. When you tell it to change to another format it 
won't just do the extension but will also convert the data.

Michael D Novack