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Northglenn, Colorado, United States
I'm primarily a BI Developer on the Microsoft stack. I do sometimes touch upon other Microsoft stacks ( web development, application development, and sql server development).

Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Running specialized CSV in SSRS with different device settings.

So this will be useful if you want to change the default settings for a single report, and not all reports, that are exported to CSV. An example, making semi-colon or tab delimited values.

A good read on bypassing the "CSV Device Information Settings" used on the reporting server.

http://blogs.infosupport.com/modify-reporting-services-export-to-csv-behavior/

Here are a list of the settings that can be changed in the url:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155365%28v=sql.105%29.aspx


So instead of using the standard user-friendly interface, you will be using the file system interface, found in /ReportServer/Pages/ReportViewer.aspx?

and adding on your commands, just like you would do with parameters, to override the settings:

 &rs:Command=Render&rs:Format=CSV&rc:ExcelMode=true&rc:Qualifier=%22&rc:NoHeader=false&rc:FieldDelimiter=, 

Note:
This however, still leaves the problem with the qualifier. I was told that a csv file being sent to a third-party had to have quotation marks around each value (e.g. "First Name"). This doesn't seem possible in SSRS. The qualifier will only put quotes around a field if there was already a quote in the value (e.g. William "Big Bill" Andrus => "William "Big Bill" Andrus") which would also give incorrect usage of quotes if you hard code them (e.g. "First Name" => ""First Name""). And, there seems to be no way to force the qualifier to display.