FAQ: Dropping unwanted pages from spools

Excluding lines or pages

There are some pages/lines in the report I don’t want. How can I get rid of them?

There are several ways to tell CoolSpools what pages to exclude from the output. When converting to certain formats such as Excel, you can also exclude specific lines.

Excluding pages

The relevant command parameters are:

• EXCLPAGNBR
• EXCLPAGKEY

If there are certain pages in the spooled file you’re converting that you don’t want in the output (such as summary totals or header sheets), you can exclude (drop) them from the output by means of either the EXCLPAGNBR (Exclude Page Number) or EXCLPAGKEY parameters.

EXCLPAGNBR lets you specify the pages to be excluded in terms of:

• The exclusion point. This might be:
  • The start of the spooled file e.g. drop the first 2 pages
  • The end of the spooled file e.g. drop the last 3 pages
  • The start of the output file e.g. drop the first 2 pages after the split point
  • The end of the output file e.g. drop the last 3 pages before the next split point
  • A specific page number, e.g. drop page 3
• The number of pages to drop from that point
• There are also options to just drop pages if they are blank.

EXCLPAGKEY lets you specify the pages to be excluded in terms of:

• A piece of text (the “key string”), which, when found on a page, will cause that page to be excluded or included
• An option to indicate whether to exclude pages where the key string occurs or include only pages where the key string occurs.
• The number of pages to exclude or include starting from the page where the key string occurs.

Excluding lines

This option is only available when outputting to the following formats:

• Excel (CVTSPLXLS command only)
• CSV (CVTSPLCSV command only)
• Text (CVTSPLTXT command)

The relevant command parameters are:

• EXCLLINNBR
• EXCLLINKEY

If there are certain lines you want to exclude from the output (for example, headings and footers or summaries when outputting to an Excel spreadsheet or CSV file and you only want detail information), you can specify the lines to be excluded on the EXCLLINNBR and/or EXCLINKEY parameters.

EXCLLINNBR lets you specify the lines to be excluded in terms of:

• The first line number to be excluded
• The number of lines to exclude starting from that line number
• The range of page numbers to which this exclusion rule applies

EXCLLINKEY lets you specify the lines to be excluded in terms of:

• A piece of text, which, when found on a line, will cause that line to be excluded
• The number of lines to exclude starting from the line on which the text is found
• The range of page numbers to which this exclusion rule applies