I’m using WebIntelligence 2.5 to create a report, then downloading it to Excel. Trouble is, any fields in the report containing more than 255 characters are being truncated. This seems to happen regardless of what browser I’m using.
Is there a simple way around this limit? Am I just missing something obvious?
mewing (BOB member since 2006-01-09)
Welcome to B:bob:B! If you had done a Search, on keywords save Excel, you could find where this topic has been discussed before. Here’s a link to a post I’ve made on the topic in the past: Downloading data from Webi
Please read our FAQs in each forum, and remember to use our Search facility before posting a question.
When you post a new topic, the first line of the new-topic comes up with:
Search first? Did you try to search first? [Search] [Search Tips] [How To Ask Smart Questions]Check out those hyperlinks – they’ll help you out as a new member:
Search
Search Tips
How To Ask Smart Questions
The How To Ask Smart Questions has a particular section, “Before You Ask”, which says:
Before You Ask
Is there anything I should do before I ask my question?
The four things you should have already done before posting a question are…
Read the manual (RTM) or Search the web (STW)
Read the FAQ
Ask a knowledgeable co-worker or friend
Search BOB!
Anita Craig 
(BOB member since 2002-06-17)
Thanks Anita. I appreciate the quick response.
I was aware of the work-around you directed me to, having already done the faq reading and searching you suggest. But I didn’t find anything referring to truncation of text or to a 255 character limit on data. I was hoping for a solution that would make the download option work as it should – maybe a setting I wasn’t aware of. Something like that.
Can anybody explain why this truncation is happening? 255 characters seems like an awfully low limit to build into a reporting tool.
mewing (BOB member since 2006-01-09)
OK, what you haven’t said here is whether you are using that technique of saving the HTML page, or whether you are exporting to Excel, which exports the data cube, not the formatted output.
You also haven’t said which version you’re using – someone might know of a bug in that particular version.
Anita Craig (BOB member since 2002-06-17)
I’m not saving the HTML. I’m simply invoking the “Download” function, which creates a CSV file and either opens it in Excel or saves it to disk, depending on what option I select in the File Download dialog.
Using this function I’ve tried both, first opening directly into Excel, then saving the data to disk and opening the resulting CSV file with Excel. Both result in the truncation I’ve described. Also, by opening the CSV file using Notepad, I’ve observed that the truncation is happening before the file is opened in Excel, so the version of Excel I’m using shouldn’t matter, but for completeness’s sake, it’s Excel 2000.
The browsers I’ve tried this with are Firefox 1.0.7 and IE 6.0. In my original post I noted the WebIntelligence version – 2.5.
Any ideas?
mewing (BOB member since 2006-01-09)
I’m sorry, but I don’t know why – and I tried doing a search on tech support, but I can’t figure out whether/how to search on past problem resolutions any more.
I’m going to hazard a guess that it doesn’t matter about your browser – that it’s either a BusinessObjects or a CSV/Excel limitation – I don’t know which. But this only a guess.
So – if anyone else out there knows about this limitation – and why it’s there – we’d love to hear from you.
Anita Craig (BOB member since 2002-06-17)
Well thanks for the input Anita. I appreciate your effort. But it looks like I’ll have to live with the HTML work-around, at least for now. Let’s hope someone wanders by who can shed a little more light on this issue.
Mike
mewing (BOB member since 2006-01-09)