Cognos report column with zero width appearing - cognos

I have a Cognos report with a few calculation columns that are necessary not to be hidden otherwise there are alignment problems. The grouping is quite intricate and requires these columns to be there.
In order to hide the calculation columns I set their width to zero pixels. In the HTML version of the report the column does not appear, however in other versions like in Excel there is an empty column appearing. Any ideas how to solve this?

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How to set a column width fixed in excel?

I have a pivot table in Excel with a few filters.
There a particular columns in filter that contain large data and a few columns that have small data. So I want to fix the column size to a particular value so that whenever I change the filter in the pivot table the size of column remains same.
I have added an example below.
So I want to fix the size of column A no matter how the filter changes its width remains same. Is it possible?
Go to PivotTable Options and clear Autofit column withs on update checkbox:

Exclude '0' values from an Excel 2010 column chart

Is there any way to exclude values from a chart that are '0'? The data source is a mixture of vlookup's or sums where the results have a value others are '0'. When I plot the chart and there are some axis points with all '0' - can these be excluded to only show columns with data present?
Changing the source data to blank cells stills plots the data. There is an option on the line charts to join/connect empty cells but there is no function that I am aware of for a column chart.
Indeed it is:
Change your formula(s) to an if statement, so that it return NA() instead of 0. The chart won't show/include N/A values, however the label will be viable still as a standard. You may hide this label.
This method will work in this case if I understood your OP correctly. However, it may not work in all cases, as hiding 0-values from graphs may or may not require a different approach.

How can I stop excel from merging my SSRS report columns?

I have an SSRS report that the end user is exporting to excel. When exported, this report seems to merge a couple columns and add a "blank" column within a column group in the report.
Here is the column group in SSRS:
Which for some reason becomes (Notice [2015 Expenditure] is merged into columns C and D in excel. Also column F [Expenditure] shouldn't even be there! it is not associated with a year, which the group is grouped by, and there are definitely no values in this "column":
For the extra column, I've considered that has to do with how I've set up the column group - but I can't really figure anything else out to change with it. It is a pretty basic grouping in SSRS.
You need to remove all report headers, footers, labels and images etc. from your report so that the ONLY data displayed is the grid/matrix and those column headings.
This will guarantee that your cells will be displayed correctly.
Once you have done that you can experiment with adding back the Report Headings and any other formatting step by step.
In my experience the less formatting the more chance you have of getting a usable spreadsheet.
I would just get the user to export to XML and then open in Excel.
Just to add onto what BIDeveloper has said, make sure the location of the grid/matrix is set to 0,0 coordinates in the properties window. This guarantees no columns to the left will appear.

Excel Pivot Chart: remove zero values

I have Pivot table with one Axis field (containing 13 elements 0-12) and two Values series. One of the series (A) has 13 values. The other series (B) has only 3 elements.
When I make a pivot table, I'm able to hide the zero values using this explanation :
Excel 2010: Hide 0 values in Pivot
However when I make a pivot chart (line chart) the series B keep showing zero (or a line dropping to the x-axis). I want the line of the series B to stop when there are no values (the line should be floating on the chart).
Anyone has an idea how to achieve this ?
I faced a similar issue where the Series drops down to Zero.
I have a Pivot Chart linked to a Pivot Table with multiple Series for 7 different Key Figures & other Fields. I pick up my source data from BEx/BI using Formula to bring in some extra Columns & apply some miscellaneous formatting. This data is then forms the basis for my Pivot Table & Pivot Chart.
I found that you cannot filter the Pivot Table as the Fields do not contain items. You cannot use NA() or even "" (double-quotes) using Formula - this is because when using different kinds of aggregation within the Pivot Table the NA() cannot be SUMMED and hence the Series is not displayed. It also appears that setting a Cell to blank using "" (double-quotes) in a Formula has no effect either. I even tried #DIV/0! errors & then hiding the errors - no luck.
As a workaround, the "only" way I have found so far that works is to manually Filter my final data input for the Pivot Table by zero and then simply delete the values. Refreshing the Pivot Table then allows the Pivot Chart to hide the blanks and the data points will not be displayed. This means that any Series with intermittent values are displayed correctly.
Found a trick: in the data field use =if(x=0,na(),x/y). The graph will be fine but the table will look ugly (with #NAs). You can use conditional formatting on the table to set the font color as white when there is an error.
Voila!!!

How can I split a crosstab corner into cells matching the columns below it?

When recreating a Cognos 7 report in Cognos 8 I noticed the old report does something my report can't (best I can tell). The report has a crosstab corner split into cells matching the multi-column "rows" part of the crosstab. I tried recreating this in Cognos 8 to no avail.
I can't use the Structure > Headers and Footers > split list row cell menu option; that does basically what I want, but only for headers/footers, which I guess this doesn't count as. Closest I came was to use a table inside the crosstab corner":
This however results in no attempt to match up the corner's cells with the cells below it. And since the content in the "rows" part of the crosstab are of dynamic length, I can't manually play with margins/padding to align this header.
How can I split the crosstab corner into cells matching the columns below it, like you can with Headers/Footers?
After talking with a Cognos 8 consultant you can't do this in Cognos 8. The Cognos 7 report could only do it because of how Cognos 7 did crosstabs, which changed. So the best option is to do as I did, make a table with cells and add some padding to try and make the "headers" approximately match the cells below. I recommend using borders on the left/right of the cells to clearly show the separation of the headers.

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