SSRS 2008 R2 Export to Excel Hiding Columns

When I started working on SSRS in my learning days it took lot of my time to solve empty/hidden columns in excel after exporting from report.

Normally if you use only list control in your report without any other controls, we can export clean excel without any empty columns. But if there are any controls along with list control in your report, you have to concentrate more on alignment of each control to get proper excel export.

Hidden columns are result of small deviations in widths of controls.

For Example let us take one rectangle control for header and list control for users information in one Report as shown in Picture-1

Picture -1

Picture - 2

As shown in Picture 1, rectangle width is 1.0025 inches and list column width is 1.00 inches so because of 0.0025 difference in widths we will get column B as hidden in exported excel sheet as shown in Picture 2.

• To avoid hidden columns maintain widths with rounded values.
• If there are two or more controls above the list control, make sure each control is side by side and the width of each control is as integral multiple of list column width.