Hello,
I've been working lately on bi publisher reports with multiple columns ( exceeding 63 columns).
Usually I prefer using RTF templates over the basic bi publisher layout editor or excel template for flexibility and access to put in some code. For example to add if else statement , naming different sheets etc …
However I ‘m running frequently into the MS word table limitation of 63 columns. For reference I’m creating report with roughly 70-80 columns. I've exploring some alternatives and workaround but nothing seems to fit perfectly.
First I tried moving to another doc editor but from what I've found bi publisher and RTF are tailored for MS word so this approach will demand more adaptation for not so much in return.
Second I tried using the two inner tables in one outer table approach that consists of creating one big table with two columns and only one row and then putting one table in each table cell of the big table which would split the columns of the report between these two table thus doubling the max number of columns up to 126. After a lot of tunning on the table parameters in order to properly display one table when generating the excel afterwards, I was able to eliminate any unwanted space/cells horizontally however I always had a merged cells as the last row coming from the big table. This is a big issue since I don't want any kind of merged cells in my final excel. NOTE : I also set the feature "keep values in same column" to true when tunning my template properties but it did not solve the last row issue.
Third I thought of the “text to columns” feature in excel meaning that I would put all the columns from range 63 to the final column in the 63rd column when creating my RTF template and then splitting them in excel generated but this is also not possible since it needs the final user to do some additional steps in splitting and adapting the formatting of the new columns to the whole table.
From my research I found that bi publisher is really made for simple report and not for complex ones so with this in mind I was wandering what would oracle suggest to use when it comes to complex report ? is there another technology that we can use ? any workaround to go through all these limitations ?
Thanks