Problems Scheduling from a Spreadsheet

[scott1971]

Hi there,

I am trying to schedule a report in Enterprise (Version XI) that is using a spreadsheet as it's database but the report is failing every time I try to run it.

Is this a problem with Enterprise or does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to get around this?

Thanks

Scott

 

[MJRBIM]

First, reports based on spreadsheets are a really bad ides - but it happens all the time.

The spreadsheet needs to be in a location that is accessible by your Report Job Server. You need a physical connection and the rights to access it under the account (local or network) that the Report Job Server runs under.

If the spreadsheetin is on the network don not "map a drive". Use a UNC (Universal Naming Convention) path:

\\computername\sharedfolder\

Also, if the Report uses an ODBC to connect to the spereadsheet. That exact OBDC System DSN needs to be set-up on the machine that the Report Job Server is hosted on.

You best solution longterm, is to get this spreadsheet data into a real database (Eg. ORACLE, MS-SQL, etc).

 

[scott1971]

Thanks MJRBIM,

I know it's not ideal to work from spreadsheets but for now it's the easiest solution, IF I can get it to run from Enterprise, it was great on my desktop! I'll work through your points and hopefully get something running.

Thanks Again

 

[jedownsjr]

You might want to consider creating a simple Access database on the server and creating a new table by linking the Excel spreadsheet. Then use an ODBC connection to that database to create your report. This has been pretty stable for us and with the ODBC connection you don't have to always use the same physical path as long as the ODBC DSN knows where to find the database.

We actually use CSV format for this more than Excel format since it seems the most stable.

Hope that is helpful.