OBIEE 11g - When Exporting to Excel, Cells are Merged if the Report Contains a Column in the Sections Layout

With OBIEE 11g earlier version 11.1.1.5.0, there seems to be problem when exporting to Excel, the cells are getting merged if the report contains a column in the Sections layout. This blog is an attempt to explain work around and also check if this issue has been resolved in latest version of Oracle Business Intelligence 11.1.1.7.1. This is blog is based on Oracle Technical Note 1476160.1

Down Load with OBIEE 11.1.1.5.0 to 11.1.1.6.8

OBIEE Report  &  Report Layout – Pivot Table

Download Issue

When export to Excel, the first column Product Type is exported into 2 merged columns in Excel (Column A & Column B). This is a bug for both Excel 2003 and 2007.

Work Around

As a workaround, you can add a dummy column at the beginning of the measure section. This way this dummy column is split in 2 Excel columns and not an important column.

Down Load with OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1

I have got the VM for OBIEE 11.1.1.7.1 , I have tried similar report and exported into Excel 2007. The exported report is as follows.