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Difference between revisions of "Trouble Exporting To Excel"

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===What Are The Workarounds in the Mean Time?===
 
===What Are The Workarounds in the Mean Time?===
 
The easiest workaround is to stop using Export to Excel for now, and instead manually copy/paste the table data from the page you want into Excel. If you highlight and select just a table in a web page and <kbd>Ctrl-C</kbd> copy, you can then <kbd>Ctrl-V</kbd> paste the table directly into Excel.
 
The easiest workaround is to stop using Export to Excel for now, and instead manually copy/paste the table data from the page you want into Excel. If you highlight and select just a table in a web page and <kbd>Ctrl-C</kbd> copy, you can then <kbd>Ctrl-V</kbd> paste the table directly into Excel.
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[[File:CopyPaste2Excel.gif]]
  
 
There are a great many workarounds suggested in the [https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/d2d84793-9920-45e3-baef-5027a4ac1ae0/kb3170008-for-office-2016-breaks-functionality-ms16088?forum=officeitpro&prof=required Microsoft TechNet post]. The best option for your company should be discussed with your IT staff.
 
There are a great many workarounds suggested in the [https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/d2d84793-9920-45e3-baef-5027a4ac1ae0/kb3170008-for-office-2016-breaks-functionality-ms16088?forum=officeitpro&prof=required Microsoft TechNet post]. The best option for your company should be discussed with your IT staff.

Revision as of 11:36, 8 August 2016

Having Trouble Exporting to Excel?

Executive Summary

Some users are finding themselves unable to export pages to Excel in TrackAbout the way they used to.

Downloaded Excel files are not opening properly, or appear blank when they are opened.

Why is this happening?

Microsoft releases Windows Updates on the second Tuesday of every month (a.k.a. Patch Tuesday). In the July 12, 2016 bundle, Microsoft included an update named KB3115262. This update broke a common feature of Excel that allowed Excel to open HTML files containing table data downloaded from web sites. This has caused Export to Excel functionality to break in TrackAbout, as well as countless other web sites.

If this hasn't happened to you yet, it's possible your IT department has not yet deployed the July Microsoft patches to your computer.

This is not browser-specific. It doesn't matter whether you use Internet Explorer vs. Chrome vs. Firefox. Things broke because Microsoft changed how Excel works, not how browsers work.

This is not a result of TrackAbout's recent UI Facelift. We actually wish it was, because we could fix it quickly.

Does Microsoft Know What They've Done?

They are aware. We're following this Microsoft TechNet post where people are complaining to Microsoft.

It appears Microsoft has broken a great many web sites, including Salesforce and their own Microsoft Dynamics CRM product with this change.

We Are Working on a Fix

We have engineers working right now to change the way users download data from the site. It should be a permanent fix, if we can get it working. But it won't be available for a month or two at best.

What Are The Workarounds in the Mean Time?

The easiest workaround is to stop using Export to Excel for now, and instead manually copy/paste the table data from the page you want into Excel. If you highlight and select just a table in a web page and Ctrl-C copy, you can then Ctrl-V paste the table directly into Excel.

CopyPaste2Excel.gif

There are a great many workarounds suggested in the Microsoft TechNet post. The best option for your company should be discussed with your IT staff.

It's difficult for us to recommend the best workaround from those possible because every company has different security policy. The easiest fix is to uninstall KB3115262. However, since this is a "recommended" security update, it's not really our place to tell you to do that.

Other fixes require a user to have Administrator privileges on his or her machine, which no regular user should have.