Requirements to excel export (images)

If images are inserted into the 'description' or 'rationale' field within the Requirements Editor, are these images exported as well to excel using 'ReqXlsExport'? Currently have a script which does the same as 'ReqXlsExport' in 2022b but images are not brought over and was wondering if this is the case on 23b.

[Ramtej]

Hi Ankur,

Currently, there is also no option to export images to Excel using 'reqXlsExport' in MATLAB R2023b. Typically, Excel is not a common format for storing image data due to its nature as a spreadsheet application designed for numerical data and text. Images are binary data and are usually stored in formats like JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc.

[Ankur]

Thank you, was wondering if there is anything novel in the actual feature in 23b.

Answer 1

[Josh Kahn]

Hi @Ankur,

reqXlsExport is meant to be an example that you can tailor to your needs. I would recommend something more robust for data transfer like OSLC or ReqIF. Another option is generating a report from the requirement set instead. We have seen other customers use MS Word docs from report gen successfully for this.

If you are doing some sort of analysis on the requirements in Excel, you can probably do that using the MATLAB APIs instead also so that you don't have to export. I would be interested in hearing more about your use case.

Either way, you can push HTML from the requirement description cell instead of plain text by changing this line in the reqXlsExport file

FROM:

% Special attributes
        switch(attributeStr)
        case 'Description'
           str = rqItem.getDescriptionAsText();
           return;

TO:

           % Special attributes
        switch(attributeStr)
        case 'Description'
           str = rqItem.Description;
           return;

Then, I think you can just use this VBA macro to tell excel to parse the HTML:

https://superuser.com/questions/1769577/how-can-i-format-cells-in-excel-to-render-the-html-they-contain

Alternatively, it should be possible to use MATLAB instead of VBA but you would also have to write your own exporter that connects to an ActiveX server to do the same thing.

Hope this helps,

Josh

[Ankur]

Thanks for your answer. The only reason for the export is because of the end user's preference. We usually do any analysis with Requirements Editor anyways, this is just the final output. Also have utilised the Report Gen in requirements editor which is a really useful tool.