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Bug 325914

Summary:

Report with images export to Excel show empty space and warnings

Product:

z_Archived

Reporter:

vivek <vivextra>

Component:

BIRT

Assignee:

Yu Chen <yChen>

Status:

CLOSED FIXED

QA Contact:

Xiaoying Gu <bluesoldier>

Severity:

major

Priority:

CC:

bluesoldier, inkollu_madhuri, jouyang, shah.amar

Version:

unspecified

Target Milestone:

2.6.2

Hardware:

All

OS:

All

Whiteboard:

Attachments:

Description	Flags
Report design with sample db with chart.	none
Excel emitter not outputing image	none

Description vivek

2010-09-21 21:10:21 EDT

Build Identifier: Birt 2.6.0 GA

We are trying to upgrade from Birt 2.3.0 to 2.6.0. Earlier in 2.3 when exporting report to Excel it used to hide all the images (company logo, chart images, footer etc) and that was an OK behavior for us as we don't need images to show up in Excel, but in 2.6 we have noticed that the excel emitter puts in empty space for the images (no image is shown, but the space is taken) and following warning message is thrown in the log,

Sep 14, 2010 11:43:39 AM org.eclipse.birt.report.engine.emitter.excel.ExcelEmitter needOutputInMasterPage
WARNING: Excel page header and footer don't support embeded grid.

Is there any way (configuration change or something) so we can go back to 2.3 behavior for Excel export? As putting empty cells just messes up the formatting in Excel if the user wants to do any data manipulation in spreadsheet. 

I saw couple of related bugs filed - not sure if they are related,

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=246249
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=237488


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a report with charts and some png image (logo)
2. Export it in Excel 
3. There will be a warning message in the log and empty space where the images are to show up.

Comment 1 Madhu

2010-09-24 05:47:08 EDT

This looks similar bug .. but still I can see this issue in BIRT 2.6 
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=301983

Comment 2 Jun Ouyang

2010-09-25 03:18:37 EDT

Can you hide the images for "xls" format?

Comment 3 Madhu

2010-09-27 01:08:45 EDT

Is there any configuration changes to hide images for "xls" format?

Comment 4 Jun Ouyang

2010-09-27 01:55:40 EDT

In report, you can set visibility for images, and hide them in "xls".

Comment 5 vivek

2010-09-27 16:51:27 EDT

We got over 70 reports and hiding charts, images for each report is going to be painful - have to go through QA testing and all. Also, we don't want to set the hide for each report as in future if the charts are available for Excel we may just want them to show up automatically.

Is there any specific change in the Excel emitter that's causing this behavior (empty space and warning)? Is there any configuration change or setting that we can do to get the Birt 2.3 Excel behavior back?

Comment 6 shah.amar

2010-10-06 16:03:56 EDT

See the attached sample report with charts. When run from application ( server side code) in HTMl format you will see charts. Once exported to excel or run as xls format on Birt 2.6.1, you will see xls shows blank space in place of charts.

Same report in birt 2.3 don't used to show blank spaces.

Comment 7 shah.amar

2010-10-06 16:07:03 EDT

Created attachment 180374 [details]
Report design with sample db with chart.

Comment 8 Jun Ouyang

2010-10-09 04:14:10 EDT

Created attachment 180541 [details]
Excel emitter not outputing image

Comment 9 Jun Ouyang

2010-10-09 04:17:27 EDT

Please try the emitter attached which doesn't output image/chart items in Excel.

You can also try BIRT design engine API to modify report in batch, which will also be easy and fast.

Comment 10 shah.amar

2010-10-10 16:44:20 EDT

Jun Oyuang,

I just tried out the new xls emitter. It works as expected we are not getting big blank spaces for the charts or any other images.

Will this change be incorporated as part of any coming release? If so when?

Also note, with this I was seeing xls1 in the dropdown when clicked on Export Report button of viewer.

I added viewer.extension.xls=xls1 in viewer.properties to display the option back as Excel.

Thanks a lot for the fix. We highly appreciate your help.

Comment 11 Jun Ouyang

2010-10-10 20:14:52 EDT

1. for the format name(xls1) issue, if you want it to be "xls", please modify the "plugin.xml" file in the jar file, change the attribute "format=xls1" to "format=xls".

2. We will consider to fix this bug by one of following solutions:
   a. provide an option for user to choose between displaying blank space for image or just ignoring image.
   b. Support image in xls.

Comment 12 Yu Chen

2010-11-09 02:34:13 EST

Add render option "excelRenderOption.ignoreImage".  By default, the value is "true", and XLS will ignore all images.