xlsx-Export for Workspace

Thanks for the feedback - what are the reasons you need XLSX format over CSV?

Hi Brandon,

I have the same question as well.

I need to frequently export the csv files from my workspace projects, and convert the csv files into excel format, before linking them to Tableau software for reporting purpose.

Can you please advise if there's way I can use command line or script to auto pull the csv file from Adobe Analytics?

I am thinking of using Pantaho to convert these csv files into excel formats.

However, it would be very helpful if I can directly export the projects in excel format.  Thanks!

Normally xlsx formats are for exporting complex formats, visualizations, etc. Since none of this exports from Analytics there really is no need for the extra overhead. CSV files load directly into Excel and if I am not mistaken you can choose your delimiter in Tableau so you could read directly from the CSV also.

Hi Brandon,

I get your point why there's no need for xlsx-export. Unfortunately, we don't have Tableau. Since we are using the German numeral system, we have to transform from English numeral system to German system by multiplying all the numbers by 1000 each time we export reports from Workspace. This may sound simple but is a bummer when numbers in a large report are a mix of three- and four-digit numbers so that some numbers don't have delimiters. Multiplying these numbers by 1000 would be fatal. Therefore, it would be helpful if there is a possibility to choose between numeral systems before exporting. Every company who uses this system (thousands-separator with dots) would benefit from this feature. Thank you

Hi Brandon

Exporting reports to Excel from Reports and Analytics always worked very well. Often only a little bit of extra editing was generally needed before sending them out. The csv-file I get after exporting does not open properly in Excel by itself. I would have to do a separate data import and clicking several times. Also the numbers in the csv have 1000-separator comma's in them which leads to difficulties since the commas are also used a as a separator between the individual numbers. Things in the csv would be easier if there would be the possibility to remove the comma's from the numbers before exporting. But being able to export (individual freeforms) to Excel would be best in my opinion, like it was in R&A. Or to offer the choice to export to csv or to Excel.

Brandon George - Eng​

we have custom XLSM scripts we need to run just to get the CSV working. most pain is wrong date formats and the dot in the numbers...

either support XLS format or support custom settings for CSV (I prefer the custom settings)

Great feedback, everyone - thank you for this detail.  We have considered supporting XLSX export format for Workspace for a while, but it is a big lift technically.  We will continue to consider it for the future, but it sounds like we could mitigate most of the current pain sooner by adding a few custom CSV export settings (such as thousand separators, date formatting, etc).  Is this accurate?  If so, is it just those two settings (thousands separators / date formatting), or are there others we would need to support?  Also, we already have a setting for thousand separator (in "Report Settings" that gets applied to Workspace) - where does that fall short, ursboller​?  Any other info (such as date formatting constraints) would be helpful so that we can get this right for all of you.  Thank you.

Brandon George - Eng​

Date format and especially thousand separator are the only issues I faced so far.

for the date format there is a company setting in Adobe Analytics ("company settings" -> "prefernces"). as far as I can see the csv export is already ISO 8601 (means "2018-11-27")

for the thousand separator, please just skip it!!! excel or any other tool can easly handle that itself, no need to have this in a CSV.

as a quick win, I think skipping the thousand separator would solve most of my cases. everything else as suggested above would be a nice "addon"

I agree with the above - getting rid of the thousands separator (or offering a choice not to use it before exporting) and the conflict it causes will probably provide a fix.

Still I do not understand why it would be so much work to do a decent xlsx-export. The functionality has existed in Reports and Analytics for a long time. To me it is not so helpful to be able to export the whole WS report to CSV anyway, since there may be many different visualisations and tables there. The common usecase for me would be to export only a selected freeform (visualisation or table). Again, in the ideal case as I see it each individual freeform would be exported to a separate worksheet in the Excel export file.

ursboller​ and darkstar1313​

This is great feedback - thank you again.  It sounds like removing the thousands separator on CSV download (but leaving the decimal point, if applicable), or providing an option to remove it on CSV download, would be a great win that would satisfy most of peoples' problems.  We will definitely look into doing this in the near future!

Unfortunately, there are many technical reasons why providing a scalable and maintainable XLSX export is difficult and a big lift.  We are still considering it for the future, though.  In the meantime, if you just want to download one table in CSV (as opposed to everything in the project), you can double-click the top-left cell of the table header (ie, above the dimension name), and it will select everything in the table.  You can then right-click > Download CSV from there.  We are also working on other features that hopefully should release next year that will make downloading CSV from an individual table even easier (and better).