Converting with WinSpool/400 Email Report Server

From Support

For text conversions, you can now specify what extension should be used on the attachment in the user-defined data attribute of the spooled file. The syntax is

EXT:CSV~

This will make the extension be CSV. Whatever is between the colon and the tilde will be the extension for that report.

There is a global setting in the Settings for TXT conversions. The problem with that is, it affects every TXT conversion. The enhancement gives complete control over what extension will be used. As usual, this can be set in CRTPRTF, CHGPRTF, OVRPRTF, or (V5R3 and later) with option 2 in WRKOUTQ/WRKSPLF (executes the CHGSPLFA command).

One reason for using this is when a customer has a report that is already formatted as a CSV. I.e., when they create the report, they put in the commas and quotation marks. One customer had a report where the data in fully-formatted columns was over 500 characters. In CSV format, it was possible to fit in the maximum width of 378. And they don't want the report formatted through the CSV process, so they needed to use TXT. Then the end user had to rename the file with the CSV extension, to open correctly in Excel. This enhancement eliminates the need for renaming by the end user.