>From what I remember seeing in NET reporting samples were usually 'dummy' list type reports, or trivial parent>detail
>reports. Did you try exporting some more complex layouts to excel ? Let say you have multiple band sections where
>upper detail columns have different left to right positioning then lower detail and you have object in headers and footers
>that are freely scattered around (absolute positioning within band itself).
>I wander what 'magic wound' SSRS is using to create excel layout that shows this exactly in the same way it would appear on paper.
>
>Martin undertook great deal of effort to provide that complicated excel output, and I have great admiration for this. What I would personally like to see on XFRX is not 'better excel export' but instead some sort of markup on report fields in FRX (VFP9 have great flexibility in this respect), which would limit excel exports to only certain report objects.
>So instead of exporting every little detail off the report surface in exact positioning, to export only 'bare bones' of a report
>which is detail columns and certain total fields. I believe we would get much more of a useful excel exports then it is case now.
>Something similar to simple text report output but in excel and controllable by programmer .

From what I understand, SSRS report format is XML based so as Excel starting Office2007 version (I am not mistaken). So from a technical standpoint, SSRS and Excel do understand each other by default. :-)

>Not for every report. But certain important reports have much greater value when sent to smarted-up excel file, then dead on paper
>(Or PDF for that matter) I provide only those. For those dull reports without much of a substance, they get 'no' in various shapes and forms ;-))
>
>At 130 to 10 your bread and butter is still VFP, so you can always show them some more love :)

Todate, you are correct. But starting half of 2011, those legacy apps will be migrated to .NET. What we're just doing is to make sure that the .NET version is stable enough before migration starts.

That said, the XRFX Excel conversion new feature I am looking for is just a temporary solution to our customer's demand while waiting for the migration.