With all the recent changes and updates within the Microsoft PowerBI universe, SSRS core technology gets less and less attention. However a recent experience with one of the SSRS report’s functionality triggered my interest to share it.
I always thought that WYSIWYG principle for SSRS report exporting formats only worked for PDF, Word, HTML file types; the rest of the file export formats only cared about the actual report data (such as CSV & XML data types). And Excel file format was among them; yes, report header and body of a report nicely or almost nicely were fitted into Excel worksheet columns, however I never saw a report footer being exported and I just thought that it was a feature by design (only data was important).
However in a recent case, a customer raised an issue about a missing SSRS report footer when this report was exported to an Excel file. So I thought that either I would need to find a proof for such “by design” functionality” or find a way to show SSRS report footer in exported Excel file.
And I has discovered that SQL Server Reporting Services actually does render a report footer to an Excel file; however this report footer is just not shown in the in the normal View mode (by default), but can be seen in the Page Layout.
Normal SSRS report footer layout:
I always thought that WYSIWYG principle for SSRS report exporting formats only worked for PDF, Word, HTML file types; the rest of the file export formats only cared about the actual report data (such as CSV & XML data types). And Excel file format was among them; yes, report header and body of a report nicely or almost nicely were fitted into Excel worksheet columns, however I never saw a report footer being exported and I just thought that it was a feature by design (only data was important).
However in a recent case, a customer raised an issue about a missing SSRS report footer when this report was exported to an Excel file. So I thought that either I would need to find a proof for such “by design” functionality” or find a way to show SSRS report footer in exported Excel file.
And I has discovered that SQL Server Reporting Services actually does render a report footer to an Excel file; however this report footer is just not shown in the in the normal View mode (by default), but can be seen in the Page Layout.
Normal SSRS report footer layout:
Exported SSRS report in Excel (Normal View), footer is not visible:
Exported SSRS report in Excel (Page Layout View), footer is at the bottom of the page:
You can also see actual report footer but going to Insert => Header & Footer, and voila!... our original SSRS report footer is shown there:
So, that means that Excel rendering extension of SSRS does bring all the elements of an SSRS report to an exported Excel file, WYSIWYG principle is preserved and report footer is not lost 🙂
Have a great day and happy adventures!
