Troubleshooting Reports: Reports Exported to a Specific File Format

In local preview or for published reports viewed with Report Manager or by URL access, you can export a report to a specific file format. Use this topic to help troubleshoot these issues.

My exported report has extra blank pages.

When you view a report in preview or on the report server, you are viewing a compiled report that is rendered by the HTML renderer. When you export a report, the compiled report is passed to the renderer for the file format that you chose. How much information fits on each page is determined by the renderer.

If your report spans multiple pages horizontally or vertically in an unexpected way, you must review the values in the report definition that affect paging. For more information, see Understanding Pagination in Reporting Services.

I want to remove extra white space at the end of my report.

By default, extra white space at the end of a report is preserved.

To specify to the report processor to ignore all white space at the end of a report, in the Properties pane for Report Properties, set ConsumeContainerWhitespace to True.

Some interactive features for specific report items are not supported in all renderers.

Chart Drillthrough Actions are Not Supported in an Excel file

Some renderers replace a chart with a static image, and therefore do not support drillthrough actions on chart groups.

Verify that the features you try to use in an exported report are supported by the rendering extension. For more information, see Comparing Interactive Functionality for Different Report Rendering Extensions.

I cannot export my report to Excel because it has too many rows.

Some reports cannot be exported to Microsoft Excel due to limitations in the application.

Microsoft Excel supports a maximum of 65000 rows per sheet.

Microsoft Excel is designed for data that has fewer than 65000 rows per sheet.

Reduce the amount of data you are using in the report or add page breaks to groups or report items to reduce the number of rendered rows per page. Each page break adds a new sheet to the Excel file. For more information, see Exporting to Microsoft Excel and How to: Add a Page Break (Reporting Services).

After I export a report, I cannot view it.

After you export a report to your computer and try to open it, your computer does not have the software installed that is required to view the exported file format.

Some Export Formats Require a Client Component

If a required client component is not installed, you must install it before you can open the exported report. For example, if you want to open a report in PDF format, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. You can download Acrobat Reader from the Adobe Web site.

Verify that the client component is installed on the computer that you or your users need to view an exported report.