SSRS export to Excel - too many columns - excel

I have a RDL report that runs on SSRS2000.
Today, I am trying to export the report to excel but the error message was:
Excel found unreadable content in 'filename.xls'. Do you want to recover the contents of this workbook? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.
I have noticed there were quite a few columns so I have modified the report to have less column and it was opening up in Excel no problem.
Is there any way for users to export the data in excel and have no issues?
(All columns are necessary)

The older verisons of Excel (up to 2003) support a maximum of 256 columns and 65536 rows. This has nothing to do with Reporting Services, you can't change this. The only options I can think of:
Make sure the report will not exceed the limit of 256 columns (including the columns the renderer generates for example for whitespace between tablixes)
Export to XML or CSV and open/import it in Excel 2007, which can handle 16,384 columns.

Related

Exporting data from Access to Excel (more than 65000 record)

I have a table in Access, more than 300000 records, and I want to export to Excel, but it seems like I can't export more than 65000 records. I've tried the available option without formatting and layout, but all I get is an empty Excel file. Is there a method to solve the issue?
I'm using Windows XP and MS Office 2007.
The Excel XLS workbook format is limited to 65,536 rows. Export to XLSX instead, which can accommodate over a million rows.

Using Excel Macros in both XLS and XLSX

How can i use the same macro in both the XLS and XLSX formats?
Is there anyhthing to be added in the XLSX format. i have written a small macro in XLSX (it has last column XFD) i want to use it in the XLS (it has last column as IV) .Is there anything to be changed?
This question is not about converting the file formats.
XLSX provides a broader set of formulas and also VBA functionality. Additionally, XLSX expands the row/column restriction that exists before Excel 2007 (from 256 columns to 16,384).
If your macros are written using up to column 16,384 (XFD), you're going to have to perform the calculations in chunks to make them fit within the 256 column (IV) restriction of Excel 2003. If you're using variables and not writing everything to a sheet, then there should be no problem (barring running out of memory).
Without more detail, it's difficult to tell whether you're using a set of functions from Excel 2007 that may not be supported in Excel 2003.
Which format was it written first? normally it should work in both formats of excel. As you are referring to last cell of both formats, it seems to have a code level issue than a version lavel.

SSRS 2008 R2 - MAX TABS on an export to Excel

When I export a SSRS report to excel, page breaks are made into excel tabs. Is there a limit to the maximum tabs that can be created via this export?
I know there are row/column limitations but was not sure about tabs/page-breaks.
The limit of sheets in a workbook depends on the computer memory.
Look at this article
There is no different in exporting.

Opening Excel with many columns

Basically, I have an Excel 2003 spreadsheet that I wish to open.
However, it is giving error because it has too many columns.
What is a way of opening this Excel file to view the entire data?
PS. I have Excel 2010 installed as well but unable to open that file.
Additional info: The Excel file is created using SSRS -> Export to Excel. The number of columns in the report varies and when large report range is chosen, it will have "too many" columns.
If you have more than 256 columns you won't be able to use versions of Excel prior to 2007.
It sounds like you're exporting to a pre-2007 workbook (xls) with more than that number.
in 2007+ you can have around 16 thousand columns.
This page has details about how to export to a 2007+ file format (xlsx):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd255234(v=sql.110).aspx
Note I think your SQL server may need to be a certain version to use the 2007+ excel renderer, but I have little experience there.

SSRS export to Excel UNFORMATTED

I'm looking into SSRS with intention of exporting a lot of the reports to excel. The problem is that when you export it changes cell sizes and removes borders to try and keep the original report format.
Is there anyway to stop this happening? So that the report exports to excel with the "usual" excel formatting? If it requires any coding that's fine as most of my reports will be run from C# code.
Thanks
Mat
You could export to a CSV and import that into a spreadsheet, possibly with some sort of template sheet for the particular report.
You could export the data to Sheet2. Mark sheet 2 as hidden.
Create your designer report on Sheet1.
Run an Excel Macro to read data from Sheet2 and put on Sheet1.
It's not pretty, but you could consider generating Excel sheets from the XML renderer, as described here - this would give you full control over the appearance of the worksheet.
I think what's happening is that you have stacks of fields in your reports that aren't aligned with each other and so when you export to excel, it compensates and generates extra columns to try to come close to what you report looks like.
I used to get this all time and then I figured out that if you used as little tables as possible while using more grouping within that grid, it goes along way to send a clean format to excel. Also watch out if you use a report header whose ends don't align to columns within the report.
So match object's begin and ends with other objects' or span of cells' begins and ends.
I create a seperate report with the same data, but no formatting.
Include a button to export on the main report, and when they click it, it directs them to an unformatted version of the report that is automatically exported to Excel.

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