Download data from ALV to excel issue

Question

Hi All,
Could you please tell me if there has any restriction on ALV grid data download to excel? I've a report contains 68 columns and about 500 rows, I want to download the data using the standard menu list->export->save to local file. but after I download them, I found the first 65 columns display in one line and the rest columns display in next line, just like ALV do not allow too many characters in one row and have to switch to new line. I can hide some columns but it's very strange that even after i hide 3 columns to fit the 500 rows download, then if the rows increase, the same problem occurs.
I searched the forum and in the thread Re: Export ALV in EXCEL Issue Mr. Suvajit provided a solution by using menu List->export->spreadsheet, it looks very good. But I still want to know how this happen and is there a standard way to download data with more than 65 columns to local file with extension .xls so that user can open it directly?
PS: I'm using FM REUSE_ALV_GRID_DISPLAY and the SAP version is SAP ECC6 with kernal package SAPKB70103.
Thank you very much.
Best Regards,
Jeff
Edited by: Jeff_liu_2010 on Mar 10, 2011 7:21 AM

Answer 1

Hi Jeff,
Please check if following analysis is helpful to you.
Analysis/Solution:
When we export ALV data to excel worksheet, as sap notes say the maximum lenght allowed is 1023 charaters and the max no of columns supported is 90.
(I never faced any issue related to no of columns as it worked fine for columns >90 too)
Issue occured when row size of exported data gets more than 1023 character.
Therefore the row data must not exceed 1023 character, otherwise column splits and moves to next row.
One additional aspect generally missed is that:
When data in any particular column changes it's length, alv header also changes its lengh (short text, medium text, long text; depending on the length of of the longest cell in the column)
therefore even if you have total length of row less than 1023 character, there might be cases when your ALV header size exceeds this length.
Reducing the header size (by forcing to use short text or specifying own header names) should resolve the issue.
Regards,
Parveen