Comments on: TRUTH: Business Objects Does Not Create an Excel File, Help!

By: John Baker

John Baker — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:53:54 +0000

I have the smae problem, but it seems to occur ONLY when there is a sufficiently large volume of data in the output file. Instead of outputing the 10000 rows and 50 columns it outputs one blank cell with a width of about 100 in Cell A.

By: Bong

Bong — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 01:28:07 +0000

Hi Julian,

Thanks for getting back to me.
Let me check and hope it will be solved.

/bong

By: Julian

Julian — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:31:35 +0000

Hi bong, here are a few ideas:
1) make sure the text is not white in color and invisible at first glance
2) try a “Save as PDF” and see if you notice anything different in the PDF output
3) Make sure the data is not down much lower than the first page
4) Save the Excel output as CSV and then close and open the CSV in a text editor, is there any data?
5) If all else fails, I wonder if the server has a corrupt Excel writing DLL/library, I don’t know where it is but I could look for the info if you need it.

By: bong

bong — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:02:36 +0000

Hi,

I have question.. what if the generated excel file is missing some data? Like it’s all empty I only have the selected Location and time stamp but all the expected data is missing.

What do u think is the problem? Or maybe I should ask where do u think I should start looking for the cause?

Thanks!
/bong

By: Julian

Julian — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:16:52 +0000

Hey John, thanks for the code. BTW, this might not help, but I always make sure I use relative positioning with my report tables/charts to be sure that there are not unwanted gaps between table and margins. Also you probably noticed that you have to align columns and tables vertically or you make a huge mess of miniature columns when exporting to Excel.

By: John

John — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:32:31 +0000

ActiveX code below.

‘**********************************************************************
‘ Visual Basic ActiveX Script
‘************************************************************************

Function Main()

Filename1= “G:\OrderMart-TempTest\MasterReport-Provide”
FilenameFull = Filename1 & “.XLS”
FileNameOutput = Filename1 & “-Converted.XLS”

Set objFSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)

If objFSO.FileExists(FilenameFull) = True Then
Dim xlApp, xlWB, vPath, FSO, f, fl
Set xlApp = CreateObject(“excel.application”)
Set FSO = CreateObject(“scripting.filesystemobject”)
xlApp.DisplayAlerts = False
Set xlWB = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(FilenameFull)
‘xlWB.SaveAs Filename1 & “.csv”, 6 ’6=xlcsv
xlWB.SaveAs FileNameOutput , 1
xlWB.Close False
xlApp.DisplayAlerts = False
Set xlWB = Nothing
xlApp.Quit
Set xlApp = Nothing
Set vPath = Nothing
Set FSO = Nothing
Set f = Nothing

objFSO.DeleteFile FilenameFull

Main = DTSTaskExecResult_Success

else
If objFSO.FileExists(FileNameOutput) = True Then
Main = DTSTaskExecResult_Success
Else
Main = DTSTaskExecResult_Failure
End if
End If

Set objFSO = Nothing

End Function

By: John

John — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:29:46 +0000

We had this exact problem with our SQL Server DataMart based on an excel file output by a webi schedule.

I used an activex script to open the file in excel (which will read the excel readable file) and simply save it again and close.

Seems to work perfectly and SQL server can now read the file properly.

Another problem with the Excel DLL we seem to experience is where it just outputs one blank cell to excel for no reason. Report seems to run fine, takes the normal time but then will not output properly. Its driving me up the wall.

By: Julian

Julian — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:31:22 +0000

Hi Judith, The only way to do this is with a destination. UNC, FTP, and email might get you there, but you may need to struggle with your infrastructure to make this work. For example, some new Microsoft SharePoint installations can receive new docs to their document libraries through an email address.

I would need to look more into this to provide more details (perhaps a new article). Please let us know how your investigation/progress is going.

By: Judith

Judith — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:49:18 +0000

Hi all,

I have come across the same issue in my project.

But the thing is I don’t have an idea to automatically save the excel report in a path once after every schedule is run.

Can anyone take me through that process.

Regards,
Judith

By: Julian

Julian — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:58:28 +0000

Great idea! I wish I had thought of it. I am not quite clear on how you execute the report formatting differently based on a prompt variable value (thinking from a WebI/DeskI point of view). Please enlighten us.