Supporting table with more than 63 columns in RTF template

Ambily-Oracle

Summary

Supporting table with more than 63 columns in RTF template

Content

We are working on an RTF template to get and excel report which has many number of columns. The columns can go till 1000, and the number will be decided at run time, we are using dynamic column creation with split–column–header logic. Since we have the limitation that we cannot create a table with more than 63 columns, I tried to do the work around as suggested here.

http://peoplesoft.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/peoplesoft-fi-l/xml-publisher-rtf-template-maximum-columns-3873031

Here we do create a first table with say 2 columns, and within each column will create the table with 63 columns of actual data. When I tried this and saw the excel report using BI plugin, I observed an extra column getting created between the individual tables. I assume this comes as the individual table sit within cells of parent table. Is there any way to avoid this extra column? Any suggestion will be of great help.

Sebastien Mariller

I have the same problem. Did you solve that ? or maybe took another approach ?

Updated link (IT Toolbox is now part of SpiceWorks): XML Publisher RTF template maximum columns - Enterprise Software (spiceworks.com)

That workaround is actually listed in a mosdoc too (2395158.1).

In both occurrences, there is no evidence that the trick worked well. Actually, just having an empty column is already better than I would have expected, but still problematic.

In addition, having two tables side-by-side means we also have the for-each loop twice :-/

If you're using split-column logic, I'm surprised it's a problem, though. I have produced outputs with 300+ columns based on split-column in a rtf template.

Meghana Bapat

I was facing the same issue and was able to avoid it by using the child tables(multiple tables with 63 or less columns) as sub templates in the main template and then calling these subtemplates in the main table(table used to integrate the sub tables of data).

<?template:templat_name?> can be used to create subtemplate of child tables in RTF

<?call-template:template_name?> can be used to call these subtemplates in the main table to integrate them.

Let me know if this works!

Saran Kumar Suru

Hi Meghana,
When i try this using sub templates, still the additional columns with blank data is appearing between individual tables from subtemplates.
Would you please let me know how you have avoided this?

Abhilash K - Deloitte USI

I do not think any workaround worked me for this one. I had to tell my users that if you have a lot of columns to be shown on a report, I suggest they go for an excel or csv extract. It simply would not make a lot of sense to force ourselves to use rtf and keep those pdf outputs with congested columns. if you were to use that rtf layout for excel outputs, i would still keep them under 50 if i could.

Saran Kumar Suru

Thank you for your response, it was helpful