What are BIRT and Excel doing with <email@madeup.com>?

Question

I am running BIRT 4.2.1 using a SQL 2008 R2 data base.

I have some values in a text field that are in this format

  Text words text words <email@madeup.com> more words more words

It looks fine when I preview in the SQL data in the Data set preview. But when it gets to the table on the report the 'text words' & 'more words' are there but

<email@madeup.com> 

is not displayed. This is true in the preview in BIRT, and up through display as a web page (via Apache).

When you export to Excel (xls) it gets more complicated as excel thinks that what the now hidden value of

<email@madeup.com> 

is a command to put the rest of the text field in a new row, with 'more words' correctly aligned in the cell bellow, all other cells are empty on the new row, and borders correctly defined around the now double cells for each value on the table.

Question also posted at BIRT Developer Center

Answer 1

This is FAQ.

How did you output the value in BIRT:

Is it with a Data item or with a DymamicText item (or RotatedText item)?

For Data, BIRT interpretes the values as plain text.

For DynamicText and RotatedText, BIRT's default is to interprete the value as HTML. And your value is invalid HTML! So, just change the "Content Type" property from HTML to Plain.