We’ve had a number of clients (on 4.1 / 4.1.2) who have reported problems when trying to export data (using View, Data, Export) to Excel.
One of the problems is a Syntax Error which appears which suggests that a field has been defined in an invalid way (3912 is the error I think). I can reproduce this on ONE report only (luckily the first one I tried !!). I can’t see anything special about the report, and if I export to text format, then open in Excel it is fine.
I’m sure I read somewhere about an issue with exporting but I can’t find the thing anywhere !!
I have been doing a lot of exporting to Excel lately and have gotten this error quite a bit. The problem is usually an invalid character in a field name. Try to avoid using anything but letters, numbers, and underscores in your field names and you will probably be ok.
There may be other reasons why you would get the error you are getting but these are the ones that I have found.
Regards,
Paul Mathern
DW Project Mgr.
Maxtor, Inc.
303-702-4333
In a message dated 98-07-24 17:30:30 EDT, you write:
I have been doing a lot of exporting to Excel lately and have gotten this
error quite a bit. The problem is usually an invalid character in a field name. Try to avoid using anything but letters, numbers, and underscores in your field names and you will probably be ok.
This is not supposed to be a problem any more. According to the release notes distributed with 4.1.2:
<< begin quote>>
Vantive case AP22506 Bug Number 22268
When exporting to Excel a data provider with special characters like # in the column name, you may get a syntax error in the field definition. No more problem with the following special characters: #, ., /, , ', _, (, ), {, }, +, ", $. They are changed to - (under line).
<< end quote >>
So, you should not have to worry about any of these special characters in your object names any more. I have not verified this yet myself.
As to the original poster, if you are not using 4.1.2 then the answer given above is likely to be the problem.
Regards,
Dave Rathbun
Integra Solutions www.islink.com See you in Orlando in '98!
I am actually using version 4.1.2 and still having this problem.
I also have a problem when I try to export to a text file. If I have a field that has an apostrophe in it, the exported text file will have two apostrophes. It’s not a major problem but it is annoying. BO Support has agreed that this is a bug and that it will be worked on for the next release.
Because of this problem with the apostrophes, I tried exporting to Excel and found that the apostrophe problem went away but the special character problem in the name field bit me.