BIP and Excel Output

Has anyone else experienced issues when outputting your data in Excel Format from Oracle Apps?

I have run into 2 issues lately with data converting to a number and I wanted to pass along how I resolved them...

1. Text converting to a number and dropping the leading zero
2. Text converting to a number and right aligning in Excel

1. The first issue is that when I want to report a number, say 0123456, it returns in my output as 123456. If this is a company's id number, reporting the number like that isn't going to fly.

* To correct this issue, I added the following statement to my Add Help Text Field

< direction="ltr" bidi="bidi-override">

< ?FIELD_NAME? >

< /fo:bidi-override >

My data now will display as 0123456 in the Excel Output

2. The second issue I ran into was that my Excel Output was displaying the correct data, but it was right-aligning the data in the spreadsheet as if it were a number when it was really text.

* To correct this issue, I added the following statement to my Add Help Text field

to ensure that it analyzed my text AS TEXT!

< ?concat(FIELD_NAME,' ')? >

This will concatenate 2 spaces (yes, you need 2 spaces!) to the end of your field that it is analyzing as a number and now analyze it as text and left-align it in the Excel Output.

I hope you found this helpful.. I will post any other Excel tips I discover!


*note: the statements have an extra space after the <> in order

for the statements to post correctly. Please remove them when using in

your layout template.