Did You Know? OBIEE Dashboard Excel Export Characteristics

There are currently 4 different Excel export options in OBIEE Dashboard. But did you know they all have different characteristics?

In 11.1.1.7.150120, we have the following options:

1. Export Current Dashboard

2. Export Entire Dashboard

3. Export Answer Excel 2003 (Using Dashboard Report Links)

4. Export Answer Excel 2007+ (Using Dashboard Report Links)

The following table will show what is supported.

The Conflict

As you can see from the table, the problem comes in when you provide links to Export Excel 2003 when Underlying Decimal places are not exported. This will cause inconsistency between data from Excel 2003 and 2007 when users are editing or adding formulas to the Excel.

Excel 2007 provides all underlying decimal places and still providing the correct format. When you do not display decimals in the column, Excel 2003 will not export the underlying decimals.

Disabling Excel 2003

Personally, to avoid conflicts, I suggest disabling Excel 2003 export. This can be done the following way.

1. Stop All Services

2. Edit file viewscontrolmessages.xml located under ..\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\web\msgdb\messages

3. Comment out the following. Tips – When search for keyword “.xls” to find it.

From

 <a class="NQWMenuItem NQWMenuItemWIconMixin" name="SectionElements" href="javascript:void(null);" onclick="NQWClearActiveMenu();Download('@{command}&amp;path=@{path}&amp;Format=mht&amp;Extension=.xls');"><table class="MenuItemTable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td class="MenuItemIconCell"><img alt="" src="fmap:catalog/exporttoexcel_ena.png"/></td><td class="MenuItemTextCell"><sawm:messageRef name="kmsgCatalogActionExportExcel2003"/></td></tr></table></a> 

To

 <!--a class="NQWMenuItem NQWMenuItemWIconMixin" name="SectionElements" href="javascript:void(null);" onclick="NQWClearActiveMenu();Download('@{command}&amp;path=@{path}&amp;Format=mht&amp;Extension=.xls');"><table class="MenuItemTable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tr><td class="MenuItemIconCell"><img alt="" src="fmap:catalog/exporttoexcel_ena.png"/></td><td class="MenuItemTextCell"><sawm:messageRef name="kmsgCatalogActionExportExcel2003"/></td></tr></table></a--> 

It should look like the following:

So what about OBIEE 11.1.1.9 ?

Good news is that OBIEE 11.1.1.9 already disabled this feature. Exporting in Excel 2003 is no longer supported in this version.

Other good news is that this version provides the following Export features:

1. New and changed components in the “Print & Export Options dialog,” including:
   • New options in the Orientation component to specify the orientation for PDF and Powerpoint.
   • New options to specify whether to include charts, images and formatting.
   • New option to specify whether to wrap text in columns.
   • New option to limit column width.
   • The default value for the Print Rows component has changed to All.
2. The page break options have been renamed to Each member of all columns (previously Innermost Column) and Each member of first column (previously Outermost Column in the “Section Properties dialog” and the “Sections Formatting dialog: Display Options tab.”
3. When you export a column that includes an image to Excel, the extra blank column that previously appeared will no longer appear.
4. The Format component in the “Agent editor: Delivery Content tab” now includes the Excel 2007+ value.
5. The Export menu no longer includes the Excel 2003 and Powerpoint 2003 options.
6. When you export a column whose data format is set to Percentage, the column is now exported as a percent format. (In previous releases, the column was exported as a custom format. Then, in Excel, when you changed the format from custom to percentage, Excel multiplied the value by 100 and displayed the result with a percent symbol, which changed the data.)
7. Create custom export layouts for exporting dashboard content to Excel.

We will go through these features later in another post soon.