Bind a Report to an Excel Workbook

This tutorial describes how to bind a report to data obtained from a Microsoft Excel workbook:

1. Create a new report.

2. Click the report's smart tag. In the invoked actions list, expand the drop-down menu for the Data Source property and click Add Report DataSource.

   

3. On the first page of the invoked Data Source Wizard, select Excel File and click Next.

   

4. On the next wizard page, select a required Excel workbook. To do this, click the ellipsis button and locate the source file or enter the full path to this file. The XLS, XLSX and XLSM formats are supported.

   

   Click Next to proceed to the next wizard page.

5. The next wizard page allows you to specify import settings.

   Enable the first check box to use values of the first row as field names. If you disable this option, values of the first row will be imported as data and field names will be generated automatically. You can also specify whether to include empty rows to the result data source and whether to skip hidden rows and columns.

   

   Specify required settings and click Next.

6. On the next wizard page specify from which part of the workbook to extract data. All worksheets, tables and named regions existing in the workbook are listed here.

   

7. The next wizard page allows you to select required columns and specify their settings.

   To include a column to the resulting data source, enable the corresponding Selected check box. Use Name to specify the custom column name and Type to choose the column type.

   

   On this page, you can also preview the resulting data by clicking the Preview... button.

   

   Click Finish to complete the wizard.

The created data source becomes displayed in the Report Explorer's Components node. The Field List reflects the data source's hierarchy.