# Mathematica/Excel Users

1. Sep 21, 2009

I have been struggling to solve the following for over a month now. If you have any ideas, feel free to advise.

I am using Mathematica (I am about to try this in MATLAB).

I have an equation that is literally a page long. I use MATHEMATICA to solve the equation for a particular variable of interest.

I now have an expression for that variable. I need to plug that expression into Excel, but as you know, if you Copy/Paste from Mathematica to a txt file, you get either MarkUp Language or some other Gobblety-gok....

For example if I solve 2ZX=7Y for Y in Mathematica, it will make the answer 'pretty' like this:
$Y=\frac{2}{7}ZX$ when i need it to come out like this: Y=(1/2)*Z*X

Similarly, exponents should be outputted like this X^7 instead of X7.

Any ideas?

I was thinking of using MATLAB instead. Won't the output come out as desired if I use it instead?

2. Sep 21, 2009

### Staff: Mentor

There is a product called Mathematica Link for Excel. But what can you do in Excel that you can't in Mathematica?

3. Sep 21, 2009

We (my work) build all of our 'calculators' in VBA as prototypes and then send them off for JAVA development.

The JAVA guys (computer scientists) don't know Mathematica and us Engineers aren't exactly JAVA wizards.

VBA is a nice compromise.

4. Sep 22, 2009

### Staff: Mentor

The computer scientists should learn Mathematica. It should be easy for them to learn, after all it is part of their skillset to be able to learn new languages quickly.

However, in order to parse a long equation without making it pretty try "InputForm" or even "FullForm".

5. Sep 22, 2009

It's a coorparation, so I'll send that on up the ladder :rofl:

Do you know what settings that is under by chance? I am not terribly familiar with Mathematica. I usually don't need symbolic, so I use MATLAB.

Thanks again

6. Sep 22, 2009

Oh..I get it. It's a Function! And it works Brilliantly!

Thank you so much DaleSpam

7. Sep 22, 2009