Excel Rendering Limitations

There are limitations on reports that are exported to Microsoft Excel. The most significant are the following:

  • Support for Microsoft ActiveX controls is not provided.
  • The maximum number of rows in Excel is 65536. This is checked by the rendering extension, and an error is displayed in Excel if the limit is exceeded.
  • The maximum number of columns in Excel is 256. This is checked by the rendering extension, and an error is displayed in Excel if the limit is exceeded.
  • The maximum column width in Excel is 255 characters or 1726.5 points. This is not checked by the rendering extension.
  • The maximum number of characters in a cell is 32767. This is not checked by the rendering extension.
  • There is a limit to the number of worksheets that Excel can have per workbook. Each section in the HTML becomes a worksheet; if the report is large and exceeds the number of worksheets, an error is displayed in Excel if the limit is exceeded.
  • Excel supports only the following border line widths: 0.5 pt., 1.0 pt., and 1.5 pt.
  • The maximum number of levels for nested outlines is 7.
  • Multiple newsletter-style columns in the report body are not supported by the Excel rendering extension. All reports are rendered within a single column by the Excel rendering extension.
  • Top and bottom padding in text boxes is always ignored when the report is rendered in Excel.

See Also

Concepts

Design Considerations for Report Rendering

Other Resources

Reporting Services Programming

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance