Considerations for Excel

When designing RTF templates for reports that may have the output opened as an Excel workbook, the following points should be considered:

  • The data source XML file must not contain whitespace padding, otherwise extraneous blank rows can appear in Excel.

  • The report header and footer areas that contain the report title, run date, reference, and page number must be contained within a single cell. The presence of multiple columns results in extraneous columns appearing in Excel. The same applies to chart sub-headings.

  • The data row of a table must not contain extraneous spaces or carriage returns where the field is inserted (or between multiple fields), otherwise extraneous blank rows or columns can appear in Excel.

    The Show/Hide Show/Hide icon option can be used in Word to check for spaces and carriage returns when editing the RTF template.

  • When adding columns to a table, if the table exceeds the page width to the right, it can result in extraneous blank rows or columns can appearing in Excel. Avoid this by containing the table in a single cell (with no borders). The same can occur when copying tables from one RTF template to another.