SPOOL - how to display output list of more then 255 characters?

Question

Hi,
First of all, I would like to say hi to all of you here, as a new member :)!
I've just discovered this forum - I'm very new and let's say unexperienced in SAP, unlike you :)!
Didn't know where to put my subject (in what folder) so I apologize in advance if I'm mistaken... I work as an ABAP programmer in SAP Core and SAP IS-T and currently I'm worried about this problem:(!
We have these huge reports in IS-T that have to be run in background, because of lot of data. Most of reports are very wide and don't fit in those 255 characters that is SAP standard for spool display. Now I'm dealing with this RFC that has to provide spool display with 800 characters, and this has to be on production by tomorrow:)!!!!!
First I created new format type (ZX_65_800) in transaction SPAD and assigned it to my local printer. I thought this would be enough, but I was wrong. Because when I try to run my programe in background, the system doesn't offer me my format at all :(!
Is there anything else I must do in order to get it.... (I work in Release 620)
If anyone had the same problem, please contact me!
Thanks,
BR,
Sanja

Answer 1

Hi All,
We have been looking for a solution for what I believe is the same problem, for more than 2 years now. I would just like to verify with you, if your requirement are similar to ours.
Problem:
1.     Requirement is to run large HR reports – either standard or with Ad Hoc Query in background mode in a company with more than 50,000 employees.
2.     Nobody wants printed reports these days.  We want to save the forests. Customers prefer to be emailed an Excel file so they can do further data analysis, filtering, pivot tables etc.
3.     Reports are running OK in foreground for smaller sections of the organisation, where you send the output to Excel from ALV, or save as a local file in spreadsheet format.
4.     But large reports for entire company are awkward, tie up your PCs resources, and complex reports accessing many tables can timeout before completion.
5.     So scheduling these reports to run in background would be the ideal solution.
6.     However when we access the report output from SP02, we find that most reports (say with more than 13 or so fields) have an output wider than 255 characters and the output of the spool file wraps to the next line in Excel.  It is very tricky to then parse the data back into one row for each employee.  And you have a problem if you output is for 50,000 or so employees, because then you file is 100,000 rows and will not load completely into Excel – limit problem of 65,536 characters.
7.     We simply want a spool file that does not wrap the data to the next line after 255 characters.
8.     But how to explain this simple requirement to some technical people. It seems a lot of posts on SDN think we always want to print a spool file.  NO – remember the forests!
Possible Solutions:
I see a lot of posts here that refer to OSS note 186603, but they don’t mention the target for the output of the spool is to import into an Excel File (i.e. spreadsheet format).  Just search for 186603 or ” Spool request with more than 255 columns”.  There is also a reference to OSS note 313566.  I am not sure if these will work?
I have also seen the suggestions that you need to define a customer printer format that does not wrap the output after 255 characters (create a new format type in transaction SPAD).
Did you find a solution yet to this problem, do the solutions above work, or can anyone else help us!
John McKee