Exporting subfile with images to excel

[kfoster]

I have been reading on how to export a sub file with images to excel and am having a little trouble with the images transferring over. I have read the profound documentation, and have my image widget bound to a field in my rpg program, that has a path directory which is located in the Profound UI instance. What problem can cause an image to not show?
Thanks.

[Scott Klement]

Are you exporting as xlsx (rather than CSV)?

Do you have the 'xlsx export pics' option turned on?

are the images the only widget in the grid cell?

[kfoster]

Yes, I followed all of the Profound XLSX Export Pics procedures from the documentation. When I set 'xlsx export pics' option to 'true', when I run the program and click on the 'Export to Excel' hyperlink, as excel opens, I get a message saying, "We found a problem with some content in '...xlsx'. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can?" When clicking 'Yes', the spreadsheet opens blank.
If I bind the 'xlsx export pics' to an indicator like in the example, I am not presented with this message. The spreadsheet has all information in it except for the images.
What would be my next steps in figuring out the problem?
Thanks!

[DanD]

as excel opens, I get a message saying, "We found a problem with some content in '...xlsx'

I've experienced this from time-to-time.

Usually, it is because the image is too large, or saved with a property that Excel (or the process that writes to the SS) has trouble interpreting.

In our case, the majority of the issues happen when the image is saved with a color representation of CMYK instead of RGB or with a DPI of 300 or more. Or the image was saved with compression.

As an example, an image with the following attributes would give us trouble when trying to open up in Excel - because it has compressed bits/pixel (see attached)

As an aside, if we run the images thru a tool such as Snag-It, the image issues are usually resolved.

[kfoster]

Hi Dan,
I am uploading these images through a mobile device and saving them on the IFS, then writing them to a subfile. How can I find the file size or if the image is being saved with RGB or CMYK? I am able to see the object size on the IFS and also in my javascript code, I have set the upload quality to 50 and size targets to 150x150px. These images are saving as .jpeg files as well.
Thanks!

[DanD]

How can I find the file size or if the image is being saved with RGB or CMYK?

We're using IBM NetServer & are able to easily browse folders & files using Windows Explorer.

From there, I am able to right-click on an image, select properties & click the Details tab.

If you aren't able to access the files directly via Windows Explorer, I'd suggest that you download (FTP) an image to your computer that you know will open properly in Excel from the "Export to Excel" feature & compare its properties to an image that is causing the error.

I'd then suggest maybe sending the image to Profound's support to see if they can reproduce the error, tell you what's wrong with the image or potentially fix an issue with how the images are written to the SS from within Profound.

All of the images that we work within Profound are also .JPEG - and because of various issues we have run into over the years (not exclusively with the Profound product) with having images written to SS, we have an in-house process where the images are run thru something similar to "Snag-It" to help eliminate the errors.

Hopefully you'll be able to identify what's wrong & be able to correct. Good luck
-Dan

[kfoster]

Dan,
Thank you greatly for the information you've provided. I will look into this!
Thanks!

[DanD]

Hi,

I recently began experiencing the "Unreadable Content" error more frequently (see screenshot).

I submitted a support ticket to Profound - in the example that I submitted to them, when I had 3 items in a grid, the export worked fine. When I added the 4th, I was getting the error. The image properties of the fourth looked fine to me.

What they discovered was that the first 3 images were names with a .Jpg extension, and the last with .jpg

As a workaround, I modified the procedure that loads images into the subfile grids to convert all file names to be lower-case, and this resolved my issue. So it appears that there was a case-sensitivity issue with the export function, where if the case for the file extension wasn't consistent, it was rendering the spreadsheet unreadable.

Profound has since sent me a patch (issue #5356) which should resolve the issue, regardless of case.

So if you're getting the "Unreadable Content" error message, check the image names in your grid to be sure that the extensions are the same case for all rows - if they weren't, and adjusting the case resolves your problem, if you contact support, please make reference to issue #5356 for a patch.

Hope this helps