Designing for Microsoft Excel Output

The Excel rendering extension installed for Reporting Services is compatible with Microsoft Excel 97 and later; it translates the report object model to an Excel spreadsheet and preserves Excel formulas where possible, but it does not transfer all the layout and original design of the report into Excel. Because of this, you need to take certain considerations into account when designing for Excel output.

Note

The format for reports rendered as Microsoft Excel is Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF).

Security Note:

When you define a parameter of type String, the user is presented with a text box that can take any value. If a report parameter is not tied to a query parameter and the parameter values are included in the report, it is possible for a report user to type expression syntax, script, or a URL into the parameter value, and render the report to Excel. If another user then views the report and clicks the rendered parameter contents, the user may inadvertently execute the malicious script or link. To mitigate the risk of inadvertently running malicious scripts, open rendered reports only from trusted sources. For more information about securing reports, see Securing Reports and Resources.

In This Section

• Excel Rendering Overview
  Describes the basic concepts of rendering a report into Excel.

• Excel Rendering Limitations
  Describes limitations in Excel that may cause errors in the report when rendering to Excel.

• Data Regions in Excel Rendering
  Describes how Excel renders charts, lists, tables, and matrices.

• Report Items in Excel Rendering
  Describes how Excel renders rectangles, text boxes, images, subreports, hyperlinks, and bookmarks.

• Expressions in Excel Rendering
  Describes how expressions in the report are translated into Excel formulas.

• Page Layout in Excel Rendering
  Describes the document map, page orientation, pagination, section breaks, and item visibility.

See Also

Concepts

Design Considerations for Report Rendering

Other Resources

Reporting Services Programming

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance

Change History

Release	History
14 April 2006	New content: Added security note