General ⇒ Embedding Files

[jfnewhall]

This may be silly, but is it possible to embed an Excel file (.xlsx) file in a Latex Document?
Not just the image of an excel file, but the actual file. I am a teacher and I want to create content for the students where they read through the worksheet and then come to a link where they click on the link and get a message like "open with..." I know I can store the file on the internet somewhere and include a hyperlink, but that requires the students to have internet (and, it wont work on the bus, subway, etc)

So.... can this be done? I'm worried that since LaTex creates a PDF, I can't do this. But embedding videos gave me hope.

Because I am too lazy to try, what happens when you embed a video into LaTex? Does the video file get "bundled" in with the pdf? Or, does it just call to a video file (a video file you must have on your hard drive somewhere...)

If you are still reading, thank you. My last question is the general one. If the answer to the above is "no", do you know of any way to create a single document that students could download that would have the text, in a pretty way (like LaTex) but would also have "learning aid" files (like .xlsx, .gsp, geogebra files, etc.) embedded in the document? The point here is to make it easy for students to get all the files AND not be dependent on the internet after the initial delivery.

Lastly, and this is the lame part, can I do the above so the final document can be read on an iPad? or a kindle? of course if the machine (OS) in question can't open the specific file type (like .xlsx), it would just not be able to that part. Okay. thats enough for now. Thanks for reading.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

welcome to the board!

You could use the attachfile package for this.

Stefan