Cell length limits in Excel Reports

[Susan J. 0]

I would like to create an Excel report that includes TMG memo fields longer than 254 characters. Regardless of the column width I set in the Report Options, the Excel column contents are truncated, and when I return to the Report Options screen, the column width has been reset to 254. I am using TMG v. 8.08 and Windows 7. I use Excel 2013, but of course, the TMG output is to Excel v5.

 

I have no problem with truncated fields when creating spreadsheets directly in Excel 2013, so is this limit a TMG thing or an Excel v5 thing? If the former, are there any plans to increase the column width limit in the TMG report options? If the latter, are there any plans to add a later version of Excel - one that doesn't impose a 254 character limit to a cell - to the report output file list? In testing TMG v. 9, I noticed nothing different in this report.

 

The problem could be me, so is there some option I'm missing? Does anyone have an efficient work-around?

 

Thank you for your help.

 

Susan Johnston

[Jim Byram 0]

Try outputting to a CSV file and opening that in Excel.

[Susan J. 0]

The CSV file has the same 254 character limit - although I didn't test this in TMG v. 9 while I had the 30-day trial.

[Jim Byram 0]

Using a memo to test this... I don't see any way to get full memo output other than in a narrative report.

[Susan J. 0]

I can get the full memo to print in the Individual Detail report, which is a tabular report, but that report has problems, too. (1) I'm using Word 2013 on my new computer, and all chart and table report outputs are garbled, so I now need to go through RTF output first. [Open Office might be fine, too, but I haven't installed it - and don't really want to, just to do an interim report.] (2) There's a lot of work required to turn this report into something that can be used for a chronology for multiple people. (3) The leading zeroes in dates don't print on my system, regardless of the check mark, so, once the prep work has been done to combine multiple individuals into one smooth report, dates can't be sorted without more work - or at least some Excel macro that I haven't developed. I suspect this would be simple, if only TMG offered a more up-to-date Excel version for output!

 

Thank you for trying.

[Jim Byram 0]

The form-based reports (Family Group Sheet, Individual Detail, etc.) have issues with Word 2013 since Microsoft made some changes that affect these reports. And, as you have found, output to RTF is the way around that.