Print and Export

Users can print and export content from numerous points in the application. Print and export options appear in several apps, but have slightly different functions, including the subscription dialogs. Subscriptions are very similar to prints, as they effectively involve automated printing with a schedule and distribution mechanism.

Accessing the Print Functions

The print button usually (but not always) appears in the status bar of each app in the pro client.

  • Model - prints out the model flow summary document.
  • Discover - prints out the current report
  • Publish - launches the "print-now" to trigger a manual publication
  • Present - prints out the dashboard (or slide) once the presentation is running (from either the right-click context menu or the dashboard fly-out menu).

Printing is not available for:

  • Formulate - has no printing options
  • Illustrate - has no printing options (illustrations are normally printed as part of presentations or publications).

Printing is available for users from the Full Pro Client and the Viewer Client - for content loaded via the application or directly (via URL). Limited printing options are also available from natively embedded content (content embedded via code). These capabilities are device independent and will work from desktop or tablet devices. Printing is not possible from the mobile application.

The Print Dialog

When printing content, the user is presented with a common print and export dialog that has subtle differences based on the app.

When printing the summary from Model, the user is not prompted with a dialog. The content (as PDF) is simply returned directly to the client.

Common Settings

The following settings are common to all the printing dialogs in each app:

  • Output: PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, HTML, PNG, Comma Delimited text(CSV), JSON text, XML text
    • If exporting to Excel, choose whether or not to freeze worksheet panes. See below for more details on exporting to Excel.
    • When exporting to PowerPoint or Word, choose the image quality
    • Some of the text options are not available when exporting multiple queries, since they are designed to only hold a single query structure.
  • Page orientation: Landscape or Portrait. Note: the page orientation should match the page's design to best reproduce the layout
  • Paper Size or Type: These are choices for the physical "paper" size. The printed output will be sized based on the paper size chosen. Note: the page size should match the page's design size to best reproduce the layout.

Beyond the common settings, each app has some specific print / export options.

ClosedDiscover
  • When exporting from Discover select Spool Print Job to send to the job spooler, to process the request in the background.
  • Choose default page margins or set custom margins for the top, bottom, left and right sides
  • Choose whether to fit the content to a single page or allow it to flow over multiple pages.
  • Select whether or not to keep the visuals aspect ratio
  • Discover prints can also include headers and footers - which need to be enabled on the "general" panel and then set on the second tab (green box below).
ClosedPresent
  • Printing in a presentation is only possible once the presentation is launched and running (a.k.a "runtime").
  • When printing from Present, you'll need to select which part of the presentation book or publication should be exported:
  • Like Discover, there are other options too:
    • Choose default page margins or set custom margins for the top, bottom, left and right sides
    • Select whether or not to keep the visuals aspect ratio
ClosedPublish

When printing from Publish, you are effectively manually running a publication rendering (without the scheduler or distribution). When exporting from Publish there are fewer settings, since most of the printing choices are "baked" into the publish template's design. However, you'll need to select which slice of data will be used to drive the publication (if slicers have been configured.

Like Discover, there are some other options too:

  • Select Spool Print Job to send to the job spooler, to process the request in the background.
  • Select whether or not to keep the visuals aspect ratio

Exporting to Excel

When exporting to Excel, each visualization is exported as a tabular grid to a separate Excel sheet unless the exported visual is a matrix grid, in which case it will be exported as the matrix grid.

The sheet tab is named according to the report title, which is also added at the top of the Excel sheet.

For performance reasons, an evaluation based on the machine's memory takes place when exporting to Excel, limiting the amount of cells that can be exported:

  • On a 32G machine and above, the limit is 9M cells.
  • On a 24G machine, the limit is 7M cells.
  • On a 16GB machine, the limit is 5M cells.
  • On an 8GB machine or less, the limit is 3M cells

If the limit is reached, all cells will be exported to CSV, rather than Excel. Note that CSV is a flat/ raw grid format.

Show Title and Breadcrumbs in Export

You can show the title and breadcrumbs of the report in the export. In this case, the title will and the breadcrumbs trail will display all hierarchies and measures in the query, and any filters applied to the report at the time it was exported.

You can opt to show the title and breadcrumbs of a report when exporting to the following formats:

  • PDF
  • PowerPoint
  • Word
  • Excel
  • HTML

To include the report title and breadcrumbs in the export, be sure to enable 'Show title and breadcrumbs' from the Output tab (green highlight below).

ClosedExample. Export with Title and Breadcrumbs

In this example, the report was exported to Excel with title and breadcrumbs. The report title appears in row 1 (green highlight below), and the breadcrumbs applied at the time of export appear in row 2 (purple highlight below). The breadcrumbs show the report hierarchies and measures (Sales by Product Category and Country), followed by filters in parentheses (No Discount).

ClosedExample. Export without Title and Breadcrumbs

In this example, the report was exported to Excel without title and breadcrumbs:

Exporting to CSV, JSON, or XML

These export formats provide the extra option to 'Remove value based filters'. Where a value-based filter has been applied to data, select this option to export the entire dataset, rather than only the filtered values.

For the CSV export format an option is provided to select the character to be used as a delimiter when exporting the file.