Issue with the XLS file generated by YellowFin

Hi Asif,

that is an interesting error! I have not seen it before, could you please send across the XLS file, and also the same report in PDF format (just in case I can't open the XLS file)?

regards

David

File attached.

Hi Asif,

thanks for the file, I tried to open it over here and it opened without error - I have attached a short video of this test.

I'm not sure what this means, perhaps an environmental issue?

regards,

David

Hi Dave,

Are you able to export the large reports to excel ok ?

Hi Rohini,

yes I can export the large reports to excel OK.

What size are you talking about? (how many rows and columns)

regards,

David

Hi Dave,

The number of rows are about 8K. Here are the steps to the issue:

- Click on export to XLS (Formatting ON/OFF).

- Get the message "We found a problem with the report .....

- Click Yes.

- Get Protected View message (attached).

- Report opens in excel.

However, there is a lot of data missing (Screenshot attached).

Please call me if you want me to show the behavior in our system so you can make notes as I walkthrough the issue.

Thanks,

Rohini Madugula

+1-6174498305

Hi Rohini,

thanks for the steps but unfortunately so far I have not been able to replicate the issue.

Does the issue occur with all reports that have 8K rows or just that one report? If it's just that one report then I am wondering if the issue is due to some specific data or formatting in that particular report.

Also, could you please tell me exactly which build of 7.3 this is occurring in.

And one more thing, could you please export the report to PDF and send it across, that way we can examine the data that is missing from the .XLS file.

thanks,

David

Hi Dave,

Please find attachments for csv and excel so you can see the data. When I tried exporting to pdf I got page cannot be displayed error so was unable to export to pdf as well.

I think a quick screenshare or a call would be better to go over the issue. Please let me know.

Note: Document has customer's confidential information so please do not expose documents to public.

Thanks,

Rohini

Sysinfo.xml file attached for system information.

Hi Rohini,

thanks for the CSV file, it turned out to be very useful because as I was importing it into Yellowfin (in order to try and replicate the issue) I got the following error message:

so then I checked if excel allows 150,026 chars in a cell and this is what I found:

so my guess is that the size of the data in the Description column is causing this issue. To test this theory could you please remove the Description column from the report and see if that resolves the issue.

regards,

David

Yes the description field has more characters than 32K.

Question:

I spoke to customer today in my weekly open request review meeting and she did indicate that using the proposed workaround of saving the report to a CSV file, opening it in Excel and then saving it as a .xls / .xlsx file has the side effect of creating extra rows for those cases where the "description" field is longer than 32,267 characters in length.

I believe this is caused by the fact that a cell can only hold 32,767 characters, so Excel is breaking the description field cell into multiple rows with "description" field cell being the only cell in the successive rows to contain data until all of the characters in the "description" are exhausted. So, a single case will end up creating multiple rows if the "description" is longer than 32,767 characters. These "extra" rows are then causing issues with the processing being done on the .xls/.xlsx file by the users. This gets us close to resolving this issue, but it still comes up a little short.

I am wondering if we could add some logic to the export process to limit the export size of any field to only 32,767 characters. So, basically we truncate long fields to only contain 32,767 characters during the export process to .xls file and .csv file types. Customer did indicate they would have no problem with long fields being truncated to 32,767 characters. Could you check to see if this would be possible?

Thanks,

Rohini

Hi Rohini,

no problems, I have raised an enhancement request for that, its ID is YFN-13886. At this point in time I do not know the ETA for its implementation as it hasn't been reviewed yet, but I'll let you know after it gets reviewed.

Also, do you mind if I convert this ticket to an Idea? This is because it is only in an Idea that I can set the status to "Idea Logged", whereas in the current ticket the nearest option is "Defect Logged" however this is not a defect but an enhancement request. The one thing to consider though is that an Idea is open to the general public, whereas a ticket is private for your eyes only.

regards,

David

Hi Dave,

Please turn it into an idea and let me know the status if it is accepted. I can pass on that information to our users.

Thanks again.

Rohini

OK Rohini, will do as requested.

regards,

David