crazy Excel export formatting

Jennifer Reager

A few years ago, I asked if there was a way to prevent Exports in Excel (dealing specifically with Report exports) from coming out all wonky, to use a technical term. The response from Support was essentially, "no."


While it has improved with recent updates, our Accounting department and others are really on my case about how they can't sort or manipulate the columns and whatnot. When I attempt to unmerge and uncenter, everything really goes crazy. Also, when I add Gridlines to the print version, I get some kind of wacky matrix-looking thing. Makes it nearly impossible to read.


Is there anything I can do?? Hopefully something that doesn't involve a ton of doctoring??

John Heizer

Exporting from a Report is a very hit and miss kind of thing.  It's not really intended to be used for extensive data manipulation.  I'd try to create a standard Export that will give you the same data.

Ryan Hyde

I second what John said. If you need to do data manipulation, it sounds like you should be setting up a query and piping that into an actual export. Data retrieved this way is clean and easy to manipulate. 


If you're not sure how to set up a query to grab the specifc data you're looking for, then let's talk about that.

Melissa S Graves

If they want a different sort order - offer a different sort order if you can. being able to "manipulate" a report is not good. 


Otherwise - these reports are created in report writing software (crystal) so converting them to Excel will always do this. They are not excel reports and should not be considered as such.


How often are you doing these reports? If they need something on a regular basis other than what the canned report can do, have you considered creating your own custom crystal report? Then it can still be a .pdf that they can't change (intentionally or unintentionally) and they get, hopefully, exactly what they need.


Melissa

Jennifer Reager

Thanks for the advice. My next step was to go the "real" Export route, but I thought I'd check first. I've gone through the Sort options and tried other things, but ultimately I really need to add some custom columns anyway. I'm guessing that I'll just create a gift/constituent query to apply to the export by checking the box on the report.


These are mainly reports that I use to reconcile with Accounting, so we're talking daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually. They have to have it in Excel (I tried sneaking some PDFs in the past but it didn't fly.) These reports are sometimes for other Development officers, but usually I'm building Exports for them.


Personally, I don't know anything about Crystal Reports, even though I've been using RE for several years - it's good to know that this is why these reports don't translate.

Melissa S Graves

I send all of my reconciliation reports to finance in .pdf format. I send them a summary in excel where I pull pertinent numbers from the reports and they use the .pdfs as backup to my summary.

Matt Page

Apologies if you've already discounted this, but have you tried all going to preview and then looking at all the different Export to Excel options? I know playing around with things like the Extened (or not) and the Tabular/non-tabular options has worked for me in the past. One of them gives you a LOAD of columns you don't really need, but you just delete them and then you should have a decent spreadsheet. (I use it quite a lot of COntrol reports, where you can get more details if you have a lot of exceptions)


This might vary a lot depending on the type of report you are talking about. Let meknow which I can make suggestions.


Like I say sorry if that's already been tried, but I thought it was worth saing just in case. 


Matt

Andrea Grigg

Reports are best viewed (and intended to be viewed) as PDFs - at least that's what I've heard from all Blackbaud employees I've spoken with. While the exporting as an excel option exists, I would recommend imagining that it doesn't since Reports convert into excel in a poorly formatted and sometimes unusable way. If you get into the nitty gritty of creating a custom report, you may find yourself talking to Crystal Report help, as it is basically third-party software, and paying a large additional fee for this support.


I had this issue when trying to pull a list of gifts for our auditors a few years ago. Because of the way FY was tracked in that database and the way multi-year giving was tracked, I could not pull what I needed accurately from RE Export and the RE Report was unusable as a PDF. What a conundrum - we ended up making some small adjustments to the affected gifts in the RE Export.


Anyway, if your goal is an excel, use an RE Export.

Jennifer Reager

Thanks, Matthew. I think I've gone through all of the options in the past, to no or little avail. I do appreciate the suggestions though! Seems like the concensus is PDF or bust. I did go and set up a nice little Export to use with my Report's generated Query (say that 5 times fast), and I'm awaiting Accounting's opinion. 

Matthew Page:

Apologies if you've already discounted this, but have you tried all going to preview and then looking at all the different Export to Excel options? I know playing around with things like the Extened (or not) and the Tabular/non-tabular options has worked for me in the past. One of them gives you a LOAD of columns you don't really need, but you just delete them and then you should have a decent spreadsheet. (I use it quite a lot of COntrol reports, where you can get more details if you have a lot of exceptions)


This might vary a lot depending on the type of report you are talking about. Let meknow which I can make suggestions.


Like I say sorry if that's already been tried, but I thought it was worth saing just in case. 


Matt

 

Nicholas Murphy

In our case, there are certain reports that are a must to be in a columnar format for use in other processes.  Sometimes exports do not work, especially when trying to capture something like a pledge balance on a specific date.  For those that come out poorly formatted in Excel and we export frequently, we have developed Excel Macros to automate some of the work in cleaning up the report.  It is a huge time saver to remover header rows, columns and rows without data.  


Below is a simple Macro we use (this one is actually for a Financial Edge report, but same principal) that removes the header of the report, the last row, specific columns and any empty row or column.   Once you get the hang of creating Macros they are easy to edit and customize for reports you export frequently.



Sub DeleteLastRowInActiveSheet()

      ActiveSheet.UsedRange. _

      SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell). _

      EntireRow.Delete

End Sub

Sub DeleteEmptyRowsInActiveSheet()

Dim lngI As Long

  For lngI = ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Row To 1 Step -1

    If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountA(ActiveSheet.Rows(lngI)) = 0 Then

      ActiveSheet.Rows(lngI).Delete

    End If

  Next

End Sub

Sub DeleteEmptyColumnsInActiveSheet()

Dim lngI As Long

  For lngI = ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Column To 1 Step -1

    If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountA(ActiveSheet.Columns(lngI)) = 0 Then

      ActiveSheet.Columns(lngI).Delete

    End If

  Next

End Sub

Sub DeleteTopFourRowsInActiveSheet()

      Rows("1:5").Select

      Selection.Delete Shift:=xlUp

End Sub

Sub DeleteDebitCreditColumnsInActiveSheet()

    Columns("D:E").Select

    Selection.Delete Shift:=xlToLeft

End Sub

Sub DeleteEmtyRowsAndColumnsInActiveSheet()

  DeleteEmptyRowsInActiveSheet

  DeleteEmptyColumnsInActiveSheet

End Sub

Sub TrialBalanceCleanUp()

  DeleteLastRowInActiveSheet

  DeleteEmptyRowsInActiveSheet

  DeleteEmptyColumnsInActiveSheet

  DeleteTopFourRowsInActiveSheet

  DeleteDebitCreditColumnsInActiveSheet

End Sub

Jennifer Reager

I have only very recently had any experience with macros, but this may be something I can take to my "macros person" to evaluate.

Nicholas Murphy:

In our case, there are certain reports that are a must to be in a columnar format for use in other processes.  Sometimes exports do not work, especially when trying to capture something like a pledge balance on a specific date.  For those that come out poorly formatted in Excel and we export frequently, we have developed Excel Macros to automate some of the work in cleaning up the report.  It is a huge time saver to remover header rows, columns and rows without data.  


Below is a simple Macro we use (this one is actually for a Financial Edge report, but same principal) that removes the header of the report, the last row, specific columns and any empty row or column.   Once you get the hang of creating Macros they are easy to edit and customize for reports you export frequently.



Sub DeleteLastRowInActiveSheet()

      ActiveSheet.UsedRange. _

      SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell). _

      EntireRow.Delete

End Sub

Sub DeleteEmptyRowsInActiveSheet()

Dim lngI As Long

  For lngI = ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Row To 1 Step -1

    If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountA(ActiveSheet.Rows(lngI)) = 0 Then

      ActiveSheet.Rows(lngI).Delete

    End If

  Next

End Sub

Sub DeleteEmptyColumnsInActiveSheet()

Dim lngI As Long

  For lngI = ActiveCell.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Column To 1 Step -1

    If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountA(ActiveSheet.Columns(lngI)) = 0 Then

      ActiveSheet.Columns(lngI).Delete

    End If

  Next

End Sub

Sub DeleteTopFourRowsInActiveSheet()

      Rows("1:5").Select

      Selection.Delete Shift:=xlUp

End Sub

Sub DeleteDebitCreditColumnsInActiveSheet()

    Columns("D:E").Select

    Selection.Delete Shift:=xlToLeft

End Sub

Sub DeleteEmtyRowsAndColumnsInActiveSheet()

  DeleteEmptyRowsInActiveSheet

  DeleteEmptyColumnsInActiveSheet

End Sub

Sub TrialBalanceCleanUp()

  DeleteLastRowInActiveSheet

  DeleteEmptyRowsInActiveSheet

  DeleteEmptyColumnsInActiveSheet

  DeleteTopFourRowsInActiveSheet

  DeleteDebitCreditColumnsInActiveSheet

End Sub