Excel Export Fails for report with more than 255 columns

Hi,
I am using Eclipse BIRT Designer Version 2.5.2, to create some CrossTab reports. The number of columns are generally dynamic and whenever it is more than 255 columns, the export to excel fails.

MS Excel, (newer versions) have been supporting thousands of columns for many years now, so I hope there is a way in BIRT to export reports with more than 255 columns to Excel.

Please suggest.

Thanks
Singh

PS: Cross Tab column pagination, to split the columns into different worksheets is not going to help my users

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Comments

thuston

The XLS file format does not support >255 Columns or >65k Rows.

Support for more started with Excel 2007 and the XLSX file format.

s_^_s

Hi Thuston, 
 
Perhaps you did not 'Understand' the problem and appreciate the concern regarding the 255 Columns limit.. 
 
My users see the report using the Sample WebViewer App (running in tomcat), they just click the 'Export report' button and select 'Excel' option. 
 
You may notice that I didn't specifically ask for an xls file anywhere in my original post. 
 
I am sure any user (atleast my users) wont care if the exported file is xls or xlsx - The important thing for them is when they click the 'Excel Export', they get a file that is 'openable' in the recent versions of MS Excel, and which shows a reasonably correct representation of the data which they see in the Report Viewer (which means seeing more than 256 columns whenever needed). 
 
So is there a way to get this accomplished in this context (i.e. Sample WebViewer App)? 
 
Any help is greatly appreciated.. 
 
-Thanks 
SS 
<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="'thuston'" data-cid="71032" data-time="1291645377" data-date="06 December 2010 - 07:22 AM">
The XLS file format does not support >255 Columns or >65k Rows. 
 
Support for more started with Excel 2007 and the XLSX file format. </blockquote>

thuston

I 'Understood' the percieved problem and explained why it was not currently possible, although I could have been more clear.

The current BIRT Excel converter only supports XLS file format.
The XLS file format does not support >255 Columns or >65k Rows.

An Enhancement should exist to add XLSX support. You can search for it and add your name (in the Resources - Report Bugs above), or you can file a new Enhancement.

In most cases >255 is unreadable by a human.
You may also consider creating multiple smaller reports for each business need.

Megha Nidhi Dahal

Hi SS, 
 
Open source BIRT doesn't seem to have support for xlsx format, not sure whether Actuate11 supports it. As said by thutson, since the exported output is always xls format, it doesn't support more than 255 columns, for rows >64k, later versions of BIRT (2.6) splits the excess rows into different sheets of the xls file but the same cannot be done with columns. 
 
I have raised an enhancement at the eclipse community, please go through it and vote if its applicable to you. 
Here's the <a class='bbc_url' href='https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=331197'>link</a>.