Hi guys,
I have a requirement for users to be able to export a list view to excel. Since this is not available out of the box I have decided to have a button on the list view hat says "Export to Excel". When this button is clicked, a smartobject (further explaination below) is called that gets the excel file and then opens a subview with a file control where the returned file will be loaded. The user can then click on the file to download.
Now, I have created a SSRS report which basically contains all the list view data. I create a smartobject method by using one f the methods that K2 provide for reports under the SQL Reporting Services Instance Type to export the repot to Excel. I can see that there are two types "Export to CSV" and "Export to Excel Open XML".
The "Export to CSV" seems to do the job and produces a file which can be opened in Excel just by duble clicking if Excel is installed, as I am assuming .csv file type is set to open in Excel on most windows machines. However, as it is a CSV file, the SSRS report loses all formatting whcih is causing a few issues visually.
The "Export to Excel Open XML" produces a .zip file. Although it keeps the formatting once you force Excel to open the file, users will not know that this is a excel file as the extension is .zip. Users will either try to unzip the file or when they double click it will open with a file extracting program as .zip will not be set by default to open in Excel on almost all windows machines.
Just wondering if you guys have a better solution to this than the above two.
Thanks in advance.
