Report Writer Excel - Blank Line Every 80ish Lines

[Chris Weitzel]

I submitted the following case to Prelude.  They have seen similar issues and their research indicates that this is an IBM/Excel issue with no known resolution.

I don't disagree with their findings or response, but I'm curious if any experts here have a solution.

BTW, this issue exists on both homegrown and Prelude RDs.

-Chris
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I have a few RDs exporting to Excel which works well.  However, 
something unique to the RD export as opposed to the QRD export   
is that there are blank lines every 80 - 85 lines.

For instance, RD ORDER.LINE OPN.ORD.REV.CES2 (I have left all   
selection criteria blank for testing) allows exporting to Excel 
and when I run it, I get blank lines at:

83, 164, 246, 331, 416, etc. line numbers

83,  81,  85,  85 lines

Have you seen this problem before and is there a known fix?

Thanks.

Chris W.

[Tom Pellitieri]

This is a known issue with SB+.  I can offer the following explanation, but I'm afraid I don't have a solution.

The addition of blank linkes is an artifact of older file generation algorithms that haven't been fully updated.

In a Report Writer report header, the Additional Header allows the designer to specify the File/DIF Dest(inatio)n File and Item to use.  The default file is xxWORK. 

In older versions of SB+, the specified Item was actually an Item Prefix, and a sequence number was appended to it.  Whenever a certain size limit (about 16K) was reached, the sequence number was incremented and a new item was created.  You had to select all of the items from the work file and concatenate them to get the complete export file.

In newer versions, a single file is generated, but the same process is used.  A blank line is added at the old file item break point.  The Excel export uses the same logic, but the specific file information is hidden from the designer/user.

For the few files I generate this way, I manually delete the rows in the Excel file (I know... a royal pain...).  Sorry I don't have a better answer for you.

--Tom

[slestak]

I see the same problem in CSV output that we get from OUTPUT.REDIRECT.  This uses the DIF system as well.  I thought about looking into that to also strip header and break data when going to CSV.  I usually have to scrub it out anyway.

[precisonline]

I wonder if setting up a massively long stationery (like we do with reports outputting to "F"ile) might do the trick?

[Tom Pellitieri]

I think the problem is an artifact from an older version of SB+.  The item break was designed for systems that had an item size limit.  I compiled a report to see what was happening...

The DIF file is split whenever the size is too big (31,000 bytes) or more than 500 lines have been added.  At the end, the SB routine UT.DIFF.FILE is called.  I don't have access to this routine, but I suspect it combines the separate parts into a single entity.

[DonQuixote]

I had a similar issue when sending a report to the hold file.  When requesting a printer I was entering HS to send it to the hold file; but, I forgot to enter TOFILE for the stationery.  That difference resulted an extra blank line.