Impromptu User Help  7.5.0
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Export a Form Frame within a List Frame To Excel

When you export a report to Excel, you can render the text content of a form frame. Note that although text content is rendered, other objects within the form frame, such as formulas, images, charts, OLE objects, and list frames are not rendered.

Rendering text content in a form frame can have performance implications, depending on the report. If the report contains many text frames, you may encounter some degradation in performance because more data is being exported. The greater the file size, the more time is required to render and open the file.

Note: The Text frames option on the Excel tab of the Report Properties dialog box does not affect the export of text frames within list frames. This option applies only to text frames outside a list frame.

Steps

  1. In Impromptu, open a report that contains a form frame in a list frame.

  2. From the File menu, click Save As and save the report as Excel with Format (*.XLS) or Excel with Format (*.XLSX).

    If your report contains any unsupported objects in the form frame, a warning message is issued. The warning message appears only if the report is created with the Show the Warning Messages dialog for HTML and Excel report output option selected. This option is located in the Report Properties dialog box, on the General tab.

  3. Browse to the location of the report output (.xls) file and open the file using Excel.

Report Output in Excel

When exporting list frames, the text within each text frame of a form frame, including spaces and line feeds, is rendered as a combined text string. Each text string is separated by a single space. The combined text string is inserted into a single cell in the Excel worksheet as follows.

Exporting text frames in form frames affects such things as existing data formats and content layout. Also, certain objects are not rendered. Here is a list of objects and a description of how they are rendered.

Object

Report output

Combined text string (format)

Formatted the same as the text in the first text frame. For information about controlling the format of the text string on export, see .

Cannot exceed the maximum number of characters for an Excel cell which is 1,024 characters or the Excel formula bar which is 32,767 characters.

Combined text string (sequence)

Sequenced from top-left to bottom right and then z-order. For more information about content sequencing, see .

Data formats

Exported to Excel using the General format option in Impromptu. This option is applied because Excel allows only one data format per cell, whereas Impromptu allows a different format for each text frame. For example, the raw number data 102334.23 is rendered as $10,234.23 and the raw date data 2005-08-15 11:27:00:000 is rendered as 8/15/2005 11:27AM.

Form frame borders

Rendered.

Text frame borders

Not rendered.

Text frame patterns

Not rendered.

Images, OLE objects, charts, and list frames

Not rendered.

Content Formatting

On export, the text attributes of only the first text frame are used to format the combined text string. To control the font applied to the combined text string, do the following:

      

Insert a text frame in the form frame of the Impromptu report. The text frame can be blank, however, it must be formatted to the desired font.

      

Position the text frame such that the rendered frame is sequenced first in the combined text string. For more information about content sequencing, see .

Content Sequencing

The position of the text frames in the form frame specifies the sequence of the strings in the combined text string exported to Excel. The content of the text frames is retrieved from the top-left to the bottom right, and then, in z-order. The top-most vertical (y) position of the text frame sets the vertical position. The horizontal center of the text frame sets the horizontal (x) position. When creating the sequence, the text frame with the topmost vertical position takes precedence over text frames with a lower vertical position. If the vertical positions are equal, the text frame with the leftmost horizontal (x) position takes precedence. If the horizontal and vertical positions are equal, the placement of the text is set by the z-order.

Here is a graphical representation showing the vertical and horizontal positions of two text frames in a form frame and a flowchart showing how the text strings, Text1 and Text2, are sequenced based on the horizontal and vertical positions of the text frames, TextFrame1 and TextFrame2.

Flowchart

Flowchart

The following graphic shows some typical rendering scenarios: