Excel Export - Can Grow Formatting Issue

[baycolor]

Hi,

I'm using Crystal Reports XI against a Teradata database.

I have a simple report that outputs about 8 fields. Two of the fields are comment fields and can have a significant amount of text in them. I have minimized the width of all non-comment fields in order to maximize the width of the comment fields and I have to fit the output on 8-1/2 x 11 landscape paper. With this done it is still necessary to turn on the "Can Grow" option on these two comment fields. Also I have no limit on the number of lines that "Can Grow" can expand to. When I do this my output looks great in the CR output window.

Ultimately the report will be published to my CR Enterprise Server and run automitically. The output will be Excel and the file will be emailed.

The problem is my Excel output is terrible. If my first row of output has a comment field that grows 3 lines the Excel comment cell is a merge of three rows cells...

Example Excel Output:

    A        B                               C
1   Barry    This is a test comment that     Bonds
2            takes up 3 rows in my Excel
3            output buts its really 1 row
4   Joe      This is a second test comment.  Montana
5   Tom      This is a third test comment.   Brady

This makes any sorting or other work in the workbook a real pain. Is there a way around this?

NOTE: I am exporting to Excel in Microsoft Excel 97-2000(XLS) format. I'm using this format because I'm highlighting rows in certain circumstances. I attempted to use export in data only format but I lost my row highlighting and even if I could get that to work I don't see anything there that will help me stop the cell merging.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[synapsevampire]

The data only will eliminate the issue, but it will not observe formatting of course, it's data only.

I would make sure that you're up to date with the service packs, and then I'm curious what happens if you export without the Can Grow option?

Trying to get a perfectly formatted output to Excel from Crystal is a tad overly optimistic.

the end users tend to have to adjust cells anyway, and their own settings can affect what they see.

I also often create 2 sections and add a parameter to the report so in the instance of the report needing to be exported to Excel, I suppress the display section and have another section with the fields tightly alongside each other (and test as you go!), otherwise I have a display friendly section for display/printing.

-k