Standard SSRS reports to Excel

Epicor ERP 10
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​We just went live on Epicor at the beginning of May, so this may be a rookie question. Does anyone know of a way to get Epicor reports into a user friendly Excel format? I frequently use an output format of CSV, but the format comes out with headers on every line and many unnecessary columns. The Excel formats come out grouped and with merged cells. l’m thinking of the stock status report, specifically. We frequent need this report in Excel so that we can analyze the data but it requires a lot of manipulation to get the data in a user friendly format. I’d rather not have to try to create a BAQ to replicate the stock status report to create a dashboard. How have other users handled this?

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Most standard reports we need in Excel, so we’ve created custom Report Styles and modified the report layout so that the data is in a Tablix with each header or data field in its own cell. When a user wants to run the report as a PDF report, they’ll use the standard Epicor style with output set to PDF. When they want to export it to Excel, they’ll select the Excel style and set the output to Excel - Data Only.

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I’ve always just made a custom version of the SSRS RDL. Here’s a few notes regarding issues with RDLs destined for Excel.

  1. Use Tablix. With only one field per cell. Merging cells is okay, but use it sparingly.
  2. If looking for “raw data” avoid Group headers or footers
  3. Lineup text boxes. A column break is created at the left and right edges of each text box. So if you have a field in the page header (like Date), make sure its left and right edges line up with cells in the tablix below. If you text box needs to be bigger than the cell below it, stretch it all the way to span two cells.
  4. When selecting the “Excel” output format when running a report, you’ll get the header repeated every page. Select the “Excel Data Only” output format to get just the body.

We have many reports that are tweaks of the built-in ones, that have the Style name ending with “…(Excel Friendly)”

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Thanks, everyone! Your responses were helpful!