Tips on Export to CSV

One-Time Execution of a Report to CSV

When executing the report, if executing it locally click on the “Export to CSV” from the submission dialog instead of “On Screen” or “To Printer". When running the report on the server, check the “Export to CSV” box on the “Advanced” tab of the “Printer Selection” dialog.

Changing Report to Always Execute to CSV

Within RDA, choose Report and Printer Setup, check the “Export to CSV” box to set the report to Export to CSV in the specifications.

You can uncheck the “Export to CSV” box at submission time to prevent a report from creating a CSV file when you have set it in the specs of the report. It will only affect the one run and “Export to CSV” will still be set in the specs.

Note:

·         Even though the CSV file is created and Excel pops up to view it, a PDF file is still created in the PrintQueue directory.

·         Cover pages will not go into the CSV file. Report Headers and Page Headers will only occur once in the CSV file. Report Footers and Page Footers will not appear in the CSV file. All of these will still be in the PDF file.

·         Fields that have wrapping text will appear all in one cell in the CSV file, instead of taking up multiple rows in the spreadsheet. This allows wrapping to be done in the cell by the spreadsheet application.

Considerations During Report Design

Not all reports will come through into Excel perfectly. Particularly problematic are group sections with lots of one-character data fields. This section is intended to assist in getting clean CSV output from RDA.

Excel’s default column width on startup is equivalent to about 52 units in RDA, and this value was built into the CSV code. For best results, set your horizontal grid alignment in RDA to 52 units and turn on the “snap to grid”. Each column you see with this setting is equivalent to one column in your Excel spreadsheet. Align the data so the right edge of each data field is in a column. It is okay if a data field overlaps into the next column in RDA, in Excel the data will be in discrete columns.

By following these rules, you should be able to design reports that export to Excel perfectly.

Note:

·         If the data fields are off by even one unit in the vertical direction in RDA, they will appear in separate rows in the spreadsheet.

·         If more than one data field at the same vertical alignment appears in a column, only one of these fields will be in the CSV file. The first one to get output “wins” the right to occupy the cell.

International Considerations

Obviously, a comma separated value file will not work in a country using the comma as a decimal marker. The Export to CSV enhancement will recognize when the decimal separator is a comma, and will instead create a tab-separated file with a .txt extension. Instead of commas being stripped out, tabs are stripped out of the data.