Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Report Writer: Format problems with GP downloads to csv files using Report Scheduler and Terminal Services

· We are currently using GP2010 in a Terminal Services environment. When I create a report using Report Writer and use Report Schedule to download the report in csv format there are issues with the formatting. Two examples of problems are:

1. Decimal place will not always format, e.g. 20.00 will sometimes show as 2000.

2. Alpha fields that have been reformatted to 1 character will show as the full alpha fields.

These problems do not happen every time that we run the report. Sometimes we will run on one server and have the issues, change the server we are on and the report will download correctly.

When I preview the report using the screen print in Report Writer, the report displays correctly for both the alpha and numeric fields.

Has anyone else experienced these issues? Does anyone have a solution?

Linda,

1. There are one of 2 reasons why this would be:

a. The data is coming out of GP as "2000" and not "20.00". This is possible if the Decimal Places Currency field or Currency Index is wrong.

However as you mention that this is OK when printing to screen then I'd suspect this isn't your issue.

a. I would suspect that this is actually Excel doing this.

If you have a .csv file and just double click to open it, then it'll likely open in Excel and the app will be helpful and format the file for you. Now why it would turn 20.00 into 2000 I'm not sure. But I'm guessing this would be the case.

If you open notepad and open the file in notepad (or any other text editor) does the data show "20.00" or "2000"?

If 20.00 then it is Excel re-formatting the column. If it is 2000 then RW/Dexterity formatted the output incorrectly.

2. How are you remformatting the field to show 1 character?

If you just shorten the width of a string field to show just one character in RW, then the print to screen/printer will just print the one character. However any kind of "export" such as csv/text/tab will take the entire field and export it as you are seeing.

If the true goal is to just show the first char (or any specific chars I guess) then you would need to actually make a calculated field with just the data desired.

You can make a calculated field and call the RW function called:

RW_Substring

in string SourceString;

in integer BeginPos;

in integer Length;

The first param is the original field (for example it might contain ABCDEF)

2nd param is "where to start from" - in your case probably 1

3rd param is "how many chars" - in your case 1 as you mention 1 character.

So now you would make the original field on the report invisible and replace it with this new calc field which will contain just the 1 character of data.

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