Excel - updating a worksheet from a SSRS scheduled report datasource

Question

I have tried the various different methods that Excel offers to work with external data.

I have inherited a system in work that involves copy and pasting data from one SSRS report into a pretty complex Excel workbook. I want to automate this system, but for the time being I still have to work with the Excel file.

This Excel file needs to be updated daily - I want to schedule the SSRS report using Windows File Sharing; have it run every day and have the Excel workbook look at the report each time the spreadsheet is opened, updating (adding data to) various tables and cells with the values in the report.

I'm finding this process really unstable. It will work for some reports, but not others. Any pivot charts based on the connection will lose their data and formatting if the sheets cannot link to each other. On opening the main, destination excel file, I get errors about links not being updated, etc. Browsing for the file and reconnecting it works, but this defeats the object.

Could the be something integral to these set up working every time that I might be missing, or does Excel have a feature that better suits what I'm trying to do?

Many thanks for your help!

I'm using SQL Server 2005, Excel 2013 and the reports and datasheet are stored in a shared folder

Answer 1

I think you are heading down a dead-end. You will never have enough control over the rendered output from SSRS and any solution will be fragile.

I assume the SSRS data source is SQL or some other source that Excel can read. I would take the Dataset code from the SSRS report and implement it as Data tables in Excel, e.g. Data ribbon / Get External Data.

In the simplest implementation, each query just populates an Excel Table. You can set the connection definitions to auto-refresh on open.

For more complex requirements you can build an Analysis Model in Excel using the Power Pivot Add-In (included (but not enabled) with Excel 2013). This lets you relate datasets to each other and add calculations etc. The gotcha here is that you cant auto-refresh without SharePoint.