Web Intelligence charts are converted to image when exporting to Excel format

Products

• SUPPORT AUTOMATION- SERVER
• CA Service Desk Manager - Unified Self Service
• CA Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Management - Asset Portfolio Management
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

Different behavior can be observed between BOE XI 3.1 and BI 4.x releases when exporting a Web Intelligence report with charts to Excel format:

In BO XI 3.1 charts are automatically converted to the closest corresponding chart format available inExcel.

In BI 4.x charts are converted to image in Excel, as showed in image below.

<Please see attached file for image>

Environment

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 SP6 or newerSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.xWeb IntelligenceMicrosoft Excel

Cause

BI 4.0 introduced a new charting engine (CVOM). The default behavior of this engine is to export charts to Excel as images.

The reason behind is that there are several charts in Web Intelligence which don't exist in Excel, and therefore it would be not possible to export them anything else than images.

This provides more flexibility of the chart formatting in Web Intelligence reports and more accuracy when exporting to Excel format.

Resolution

This behavior in BI 4.x is by design and expected.

Additional Information

You can find more information about the new chart engine in BI 4.0 on the related enhancement request

raised on the SAP Idea Place: WebI: Export to Excel with Excel Chart

KBA 1909673 - Web Intelligence (WebI) charts are converted to image when Saving it to Excel 2007

(.xlsx format) since BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 SP6