Export from BIRT to powerpoint format

Hi everyone,

BIRT 2.6.1
PowerPoint 2010

I exported an chart from BIRT to powerpoint file. Then I tried to open it under Powerpoint 2010. I get this error (see attached screenshot). it can't read the file, mentions that could by an anti-virus process. It can't be that since I don't have any anti-virus. May be it needs an patch to fix the export format for powerpoint 2010.

Anyone has a trick to avoid this sort of error?

Christophe

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mwilliams

Do you have another machine with an older version of PowerPoint that you can try to open it on? I don't have 2010, I have 2007, but I can try to see if I get an error.

cdoniat

Hi William,

with powerpoint 2003 and 2007, it's working. I tried to read several reports with powerpoint 2010 and I've got the same issue;

Christophe

Yaytay

[Ignore this duplicate caused when editing my reply.]

Yaytay

The built in emitters don't output true Microsoft Office files, they output some XML format that Microsoft specified. 
Unfortunately I also found that PowerPoint 2010 no longer supports that XML format. 
 
I couldn't find any way around this with the built in emitter and switched to the <a class='bbc_url' href='http://sourceforge.net/projects/tribix/'>Tribix emitter for PowerPoint</a>. 
Don't worry about this affecting other custom emittes, you can use my <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.spudsoft.co.uk/2011/10/the-spudsoft-birt-excel-emitters/'>Excel emitters</a>alongside the Tribix PowerPoint emitter. 
 
For added complexity the Tribix emitter didn't work correctly with images (charts), and fixing that required a <a class='bbc_url' href='https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=46288'>patch to the Apache POI library</a>. 
If you use the Tribix emitter with Apache POI 3.8 beta 5 background images will work. 
If you are using the 3.7+ BIRT ReportEngine changing the version of Apache POI is trivial (just put the correct version in the classpath), if you are using the report engine inside Eclipse you'll have to change the contents of the Tribix jars. 
 
Finally, Apache POI doesn't have the same level of support for PPTX as it does for PPT, so it wasn't possible to simply tweak Tribix to get PPTX output.

cdoniat

Hi Yaytay,

Thanks very much for the valuable details. I will try your emitter. But I'm in a hurry.

Ta,

PS: @Michael, meanwhile, that could be "chouette" to put that in BIRT 3.7.2 ;o) What do you thing?

Christophe

Yaytay

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' data-author="'cdoniat'" data-cid="95148" data-time="1328634046" data-date="07 February 2012 - 10:00 AM">
Hi Yaytay, 
 
Thanks very much for the valuable details. I will try your emitter. But I'm in a hurry. 
 
Ta, 
 
PS: @Michael, meanwhile, that could be "chouette" to put that in BIRT 3.7.2 ;o) What do you thing? 
 
Christophe </blockquote>
Just to be clear I should point out that the PPT emitter that works is not mine, it's the Tribix emitter. 
 
Trying a different emitter needn't take much time, but it can be a bit of a faff. Let me know if you need help. 
 
It would be interesting to know what Actuate's plans are for the future of the MS Office emitters in Open Source BIRT. The built in emitters are becoming increasingly disfunctional as Microsoft stop supporting the formats used. I suspect, however, that nothing will happen before v4. 
Given the number of third party emitters maybe the most important thing is to make installation simpler - and maybe the way to do that is to drop the built in emitters (but that would not look good on the features list). 
 
Jim

cdoniat

hi,

I will cope wih that ;o)

Keep in touch,

Regards,

Christophe

CaptainBob

I have a similar problem where if I view reports as PPT saved to the file system, the file wont open.
PowerPoint gives this error "PowerPoint can't read ...ppt."

Yet if opened in the BIRT viewer, it opens correctly in Powerpoint. I can then save it to the file system.

Steps to reproduce:
With BIRT 3.7, View a report using View Report > As PDF .. Report viewer opens with a browser file download dialog box "Do you want to open or save this file".

1. Choose Open: The report seems to be processed by the viewer, then opens in PowerPoint (2010) with the correct contents. Save to file and it's still readable. Attachment "Preview Open.zip".

2. Choose Save: The report is saved to disk but in another format which PowerPoint doesn't like. Attachment "Preview SaveAs.zip".

The contents of the "Save As" output seems to need further processing.
The same output is produced by the RunTime engine.

Could be related to other bugs https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=328982#c8

regards
Brian

wittus

Dear all 
 
I have the same issue with using office 2010 (Win 7). 
 
In one case I have an HTML report with a hyperlink (drill-through) to recreate the report as PPT. When I load the HTML report within Firefox, the PPT report does not work, when clicking the hyperlink. When I load the HTML report within Internet Explorer the PPT report (*.pptx) is created correctly, when clicking the hyperlink. 
 
So what is the difference when using firefox or Internet Explorer? 
 
The other case is when I want to create a PPT report with the BIRT runtime environment. This always does not work. <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.birt-exchange.org/org/forum/public/style_emoticons/'>http://www.birt-exchange.org/org/forum/public/style_emoticons/</a><#EMO_DIR#>/mad.gif 
 
Markus

mwilliams

I don't have PPT 2010 to test on. Has anyone tried this with 4.2.x, yet? If so, and it doesn't work, please file a bug in the eclipse.org/birt bugzilla.