Grid Exports -- Spreadsheet numbers are stored as text -- Ninja 8

[vantojo]

I'm starting to work with Ninja 8 more (prior all was done in Ninja 7) and noticed that at least the Executions and Strategy grids export numbers, such as Price or Quantity, as text to the spreadsheet.

this is inconvenient as then I need to do an extra manual step in Excel to convert the text column to numeric.....

Ninja 7 didn't do this.

Is there a setting where I can tell the NT 8 export to export pure numeric columns to numbers in the Excel cells/columns?

Or, is this a setting in Excel? this is occurring on my development machine. On production machine I'm not running NT 8 yet, and NT 7 exports numbers as numbers.

Thanks

[NinjaTrader_BrendanC]

Hello Vantojo,

Thank you for creating your post with these details.

When I tested on my end with NinjaTrader 8, I received the same behavior as described. This type of behavior is expected when exporting from the platform to excel as an Excel file type. However, in my Excel, when I exported the trade performance, I was able to convert the entire cell column to numbers so that these values will be correctly displayed using Excel's features.

I referred to this publicly available guide from Microsoft to accomplish this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...rs=en-us&ad=us

Alternatively, some users will change the format of the exported file from an Excel (*xlsx) to a .cs file to avoid this type of behavior.

You can do so by selecting the file type the exported data is saved as when you Right-Click in the Trade Performance window and select 'Export', then under 'Save sa type', select CSV (.CS)

Please let us know if you have any additional questions or inquiries regarding NinjaTrader in the future.

[vantojo]

Can you try the same in NT 7?

[vantojo]

My guess is that when ninja went from NT7 to NT8 there is a different third party package that is doing the export.

And that it is probably just a parameter or setting in this package that Ninja could recompile your system and fix it in 5 minutes.

What do you say?

[NinjaTrader_BrendanC]

Hello Vantojo,

Thank you for responding with these details.

With NinjaTrader 7, when manually saving the information from the 'Positions', or 'Strategies' or 'Account Performance' tab, unlike NinjaTrader 8, there is no option to save the file as an Excel file in NinjaTrader 7, the only option listed would be to save the file as a .CS file which as previously mentioned would export the number values to excel as a .CS file, correctly displaying the values as opposed as an Excel file which can result in the behavior you have mentioned.

To avoid this type of behavior upon exporting from NinjaTrader 8, we would recommend choosing to export the file as a .CS (CSV) file to avoid this type of behavior when exporting to Excel.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to us with any other NinjaTrader questions or inquiries in the future.

[vantojo]

Hello Brendan,

In Ninja 7 the grid exports save the file to a windows temporary folder and then it opens that file in Excel. Please try it and you will see what I mean.

when it opens in Excel the numeric fields are treated as numbers.

then the temporary file (stored in a windows temp directory) that is open can be "saved as" multiple different formats in other folders/drives.

I request that you submit this change to your development team, that NT8 exports numeric columns as numeric. It should be easy to fix.

Thanks

[NinjaTrader_Melissa]

Hello vantojo,

Thank you for the suggestion.

I have submitted this as a feature request to the Development Team. I will follow up with an internal tracking number for your reference as soon as it is created.

Thanks in advance for your patience.