Syntax Error

Attn. Users,

This may be helpful to all of you. I received this documentation from a Business Objects Technical Support Engineer when I called them regarding the following error when trying to export a BusObj’s report to Excel:

Syntax error in field definition (3292). .

SYMPTOMS: The following error message is displayed when trying to export
one of your data provider microcube to Excel through the Data Manager window
: ‘Syntax error in field definition (3292)’

CAUSE : BusinessObjects is using Microsoft’s DAO technology to provide this
feature and this technology has some limitations . This error message is due to the presence of certain special characters in
the object’s names OR because some of your object’s names match some Microsoft Jet database engine Reserved Words.

Those characters are the following :
[ ] = & @ ƒ $ % * < > , : ; ? ! ß £ ~ § µ + # . / \ ’ ( ) { } "

The reserved words are the following :
DATE,SELECT,UPDATE,BETWEEN,SET and INSERT

RESOLUTION:
Consequently, in order to avoid the previous error message, we must not use
those special characters in the objects’s names nor have objects’s name matching the above mentioned Microsoft Jet database engine Reserved Words.

A fix has been provided in the service pack 2 ( 4.1.2 ) which allows to use
the following characters in objects’ name :

. / \ ’ _ ( ) { } + " $

which are converted to _ ( underscore ) in the excel file

Note : The value #EMPTY can also generates this kind of error message during a data export from BO to an Excel File.
This value corresponds to a NULL value in the database. The best solution is to create a ‘filter’ in the object in order
to replace each occurrence of NULL by another value, for example 0.
Example : function decode with Oracle.

Business Objects
~ Technical Support Engineer ~

When we receive this error, we just then select the Copy to DDE option and then paste the information into our spreadsheet. This is the workaround we use. Hope this helps.

Thanks,
CJ

Carol “CJ” Jurgensen
US West Information Technologies
Bellevue, WA


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