Saving / Exporting to MS Excel
There are several ways to get Business Objects data into Excel. Which method works best probably depends on what you want to do with it once you get it there!
Copy and paste a Table from Business Objects to Excel
This will allow you to take a Business Objects Table into Excel. This keeps the data as displayed (objects, variables, filters, etc.) and will bring the data as it appears in Business Objects into Excel. It will not preserve formatting or formulas from Business Objects.
- From the Business Objects Edit Menu, select Copy All. This will paste your data to the clipboard. Depending on how large your Business Objects Table is, this can take a while!
- Open Excel.
- To maintain text attributes in Excel (such as keeping leading zeros) select the columns that you want to be treated as text. With the columns selected in Excel choose Format Cells Text.
- From the Excel Edit Menu, select Paste Special.
- Choose Text and click OK.
Export a Data Provider from Business Objects to Excel
This process will allow you to take the raw data from a Business Objects data provider and put it into Excel.
- From the Business Objects Data Menu, select View Data. This will bring up the Data Manager window where you can see the Data Providers for your report.
- Click on the Data Provider you want to export.
- Make sure the Results Tab is highlighted. There will be buttons on the bottom which include Options, Refresh, Purge, and Export.
- Click on Export.
- The Export to External Format screen will appear. Make sure Export to Local File Format is highlighted.
- Specify the name and path of the file where you want your data to be stored in Name. You can use the Browse button to locate the path.
- Specify the format of the file where you want your data to be stored in Format. On the pull down menu, choose Microsoft Excel Files (*.xls).
- If you choose the option Delete Spaces it will delete the spaces before and after the delimiters that separate the columns of data.
Eileen King (BOB member since 2002-07-10)