Reporting Services export to Excel causes 'Repair' and removes styles

Question

I have quite a complex SSRS report that I would like to export to Excel more or less how it looks in the web output.

Export to Excel and opening in Excel 2010 yields the following error:

Excel was able to open the file by repairing or removing the unreadable content. Removed part: /xl/styles.xml part (Styles)

All the styling is gone from the report, so it looks terrible.

Hoelscher

Answer 1

After isolation testing it I have fixed 99% of the style errors by one simple change:

Excel doesn't seem to like 'Total' cells for Row Groups within tables having no Font='' (these cells are auto-created when you create a total for a group)

Font=", 10pt, Default, Bold, Default"

Change Font to "Arial":

Font="Arial, 10pt, Default, Bold, Default"

Hoelscher

I found that if any of the cells are left default it is likely to throw an error. Best to set the font equal Arial or something that suits – Commode

Yeah, in my case, it was the Tablix headers that were missing the font. Explicitly setting Arial fixed it. Thanks, both! – Barbecue

Well found - thats an annoying bug. – Iverson

Answer 2

Another thing to look for if all of your textboxes have a font name is the Format Property. I had a date field that I wanted formatted, so, in the Format field, I used =Format(Fields!CreatedDate.Value, "MM/dd/yyyy"). This worked when viewing the report, however, when exporting, received the unreadable content error. I eventually just used: MM/dd/yyyy in the format property, that solved my problem.

Amato

Answer 3

In my case, I fixed this by preventing a divide-by-zero.

For some weird reason, instead of failing to render a divide-by-zero, it displays the word Infinity.

Rhizobium

Answer 4

I had seen this same message opening an exported SSRS report in Excel. Within the RDL, I had configured the Format property using DateFormat in an expression for the textboxes that displayed a date. I want to automate the SSRS report using a subscription and I'm concerned the formatting issue may interrupt, so instead I changed the SQL query to format the date and removed the formatting expression from the textboxes. Aftersuch, I did not get this error when opening the exported file in Excel.

Palindrome