Exporting highly-formatted Excel spreadsheet?

[valeskyt]

Hi.

I'm working with Jaspersoft community edition

I'm trying to use Jaspersoft to replace a manual process that goes like this:

- user runs query

- user pastes query results into an elaborately-formatted Excel spreadsheet, which uses the data to populate a bunch of calculated columns using formulas

- user mails spreadsheet out to a distribution list.

 

So my two-part question is:

1) Does Jaspersoft allow you to automatically generate a spreadsheet of this type, either by specifying it directly, or by using an existing spreadsheet as a template (I'm guessing the answer is no)

2) If not, is there an existing pattern that solves this problem? Again, I want to make this a fully automated process, and I'd like it to be as clean as possible. I'd hate to have to build all the scheduling and distribution logic into an Excel macro.

 

[hozawa]

Why not just write some Excel VBA code to fetch the result of a query and paste into cells and exported it? This isn't too completed.

It's even possible to run a query in JasperReports Server and fetch the result as in csv format using JasperReports Server REST APIs.

[valeskyt]

If I have to go the route of writing VBA macros to pull data into Excel, I can just drop the query into Microsoft Query and do without Jaspersoft entirely. 

I'd really like to avoid going that route, but it looks like my options are:

1) Use Jaspersoft, get the scheduling and email distribution handling, but give up all the formatting

2) Keep the formatting, but do everything (or almost everything) in Excel macros.