Web queries

[Guest]

(For example, http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/boxscore?gid=2004030908)
Another poster asked how they could solve a problem trying to import data from a site like this Yahoo! Hockey box score. Basically, everything comes in just fine except for the +/- column. Any cell that starts with a plus sign in that column is excluded from the query.
If I copy and past instead of querying the data, the cells that start with + come in just fine.
I was curious if anyone knew of a reason this happens, so I can work around it if it comes up for me.
I got the same results on Excel 2002 and 2003.

tj

 

[Dick Kusleika]

tj

Apparantly it works in XL97, but not in XL2000 or above. I'm asking around
and will let you know if I find anything useful.


--
Dick Kusleika
MVP - Excel
www.dicks-clicks.com
Post all replies to the newsgroup.

(For example, http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/boxscore?gid=2004030908)
Another poster asked how they could solve a problem trying to import data

from a site like this Yahoo! Hockey box score. Basically, everything comes
in just fine except for the +/- column. Any cell that starts with a plus
sign in that column is excluded from the query.

If I copy and past instead of querying the data, the cells that start with + come in just fine.
I was curious if anyone knew of a reason this happens, so I can work

around it if it comes up for me.

 

[Dick Kusleika]

I don't know how useful this is, but here's what I've learned:

The problem appears to be the column header (+/-). Sights like Yahoo
Finance that have leading plus signs come in fine. Jake Marx did a little
test where he replaced the +/- header cell with the character entities

(+/-),

and it web queried fine.

Furthermore, adding this meta data to the html also solves the problem

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">

Everything I know about HTML can fit in a thimble, so what all this means is
a mystery to me. Also, I realize this is not a practical solution to the
problem because we don't have access to change that site. But, you now know
what I know, so I hope that's better than nothing.

I'll let you know if I come up with anything that's actually practical and
useful, and you do the same, please.