exporting reports into EXCEL format

Hi,

My organization is currently migrating from reporting services 2000 to reporting services 2005. We are having an issue with exporting reports into EXCEL format. Basically we have a table with five grouping hierarchy. The parent groupings toggle the visibility of the corresponding sub groupings. It works as expected when deployed to the report server, however when exported into Excel it expands to level 4 even though level 3 was not actually exploded.
Note that the same report exports correctly to Excel in the previous version of Reporting Services but in the 2005 version it skips one level of grouping.

Is this a bug in reporting services 2005? I saw some other people posting similar issues.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Radu

Hello,

In RS2000, excel renderer didn't include toggled items if we couldn't generate the outline and they current state was collapsed.

We changed this behavior in RS2005 based on customer input - the toggled items will be included in excel output regardless of thery collapse/expand state. Every time is possible we will generate the outline accordinglly.

I suspect you don't have an excel outline for level 4. Is this correct?

Thank you,

Nico

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Hi Nico,

Thanks a lot for your timely response!

We actually get an Excel outline for level 4. However, we miss level 3 information completely after the export to Excel. Our current process creates the report exploded up to level 3. Some users need to export it to Excel at exactly the same level of detail (and they do not need the data at the more detailed levels).

Also, the export to Excel takes much longer (and creates a much bigger file) in the new version (2005), probably because of exporting to the most detailed level. It also explodes to level 4 instead of level 3.

Could this be caused by the fact that the RDL file was originally created in RS2000 and subsequently migrated to RS2005? I still have the migration logs and got no errors or warnings there. I can provide the RDL file if necessary.

Is there a way to control what levels are exported to Excel and how they get exploded there? In this particular case we don't even need to export data for the most detailed levels (from level 4 and up).

Thanks in advance,

Radu

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Hi Radu,

In RS2005 all the levels will be included in the excel output and it is a behavior change from RS2000. You cannot control individual levels.

Can you send us the rdl, please? I would like to investigate the missing information (for level 3) part.

Thanks,

Nico

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Hi Nico,

Thanks for the clarification! Very good to know!

Nevertheless, it would have been nice to have the ability to select the depth (up to which level of grouping) for the export to Excel.

I would gladly send the RDL file but please advise me how to proceed: can I simply embed the code in my message (the RDL file is about 150 kB) or is there a way to attach the file?

Regards,

Radu

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