I exported report data to Microsoft Excel, but I can't do anything with it. What's wrong?

MainBoss has two ways to export data to Excel:

• In the Preview section of the report window, you can click the "export" button immediately above the report preview. This export facility is provided by Microsoft's Report Viewer.
  
  When Report Viewer exports data, the software does its best to create an exact duplicate of the displayed preview. Excel will read in the data as shown; however, what you get is not a useful format for actually working with the data.
• The alternative is to click the "Export Data" button at the bottom of the report window. This exports the data in XML format, which can then be imported into Excel. See below for suggestions on how to import the data.

To import data into Excel 2007, you must have the Developer tab shown in Excel's ribbon. If it isn't already there, follow these steps:

1. Start Excel.
2. Click the "Office" button (in the upper left hand corner of the Excel window).
3. In the resulting window, click "Excel Options" (at the bottom of the window).
4. In the resulting window, click "Popular" in the left part of the window, then checkmark "Show Developer Tab in the Ribbon" (if it isn’t already checkmarked).
5. Click OK to close the options window.

Once you have the Developer tab shown in the ribbon, you can import XML data into Excel as follows:

1. In the main Excel window, click "Developer" in the ribbon.
2. In the XML section of the ribbon, click "Import".
3. In the resulting window, specify the name of the XML data file.
   • Excel may give you a message saying that it can't find a schema and therefore is creating its own schema. Just click OK.
   • Excel gives you the option of reading the data file into the current spreadsheet or into a new one. Choose one and click OK.

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