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  • Post last modified:August 6, 2021
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You are currently viewing How to resolve column splitting into multiple rows issue in BI Publisher?
How to resolve column splitting into multiple rows issue in BI Publisher?

In this article, we will look into handling the column splitting issue into multiple rows with RTF template and excel output.

Normally some columns will merge in the output when the text length exceeds a defined limit. In those cases, we need to set the “keep values in same column” property to true in properties. Check out detailed guide here.

Even after turning these properties ON, still there is a chance that a column might split into multiple rows and get merged rows.

image 12 - How to resolve column splitting into multiple rows issue in BI Publisher?

This issue occurs due to the new line characters in the description/clob field. The same column property does not solve this issue. We need to create an Excel template and the output will get generated correctly in .xls format without merging rows.

image 13 1024x575 - How to resolve column splitting into multiple rows issue in BI Publisher?

We can see that column is not splitting into multiple rows if we create an excel template. However, we will have to live with the .XLS output.

If there is a need to generate the .XLSX format output only, then we need to modify the Data Model to replace the line feed and carriage return characters in the description/clob field to blank.

REPLACE(REPLACE(TO_CHAR(ft.description), CHR(13)), CHR(10)) description

Once, we implement this change in the data model query, the previous rtf template should work perfectly.

image 14 - How to resolve column splitting into multiple rows issue in BI Publisher?

We can see that the output got generated in .xlsx format without any merging of rows.

Hope these methods help when you get into similar issue.

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