Excel export yields extra blank rows

[laudmusic]

I'm having a consistent problem when I export to Excel. When I do, there are empty row created between records. This doesn't occur in every record but enough to be annoying.

Any thought about this?

[Tony Morosco]

Hey laudmusic,

I was having the same problem, and here is what I traced mine to.

My database is relational, having several tables of related data. I was exporting data from both the parent table, as well as related tables. Some of my related tables had more than one child record related to the parent record. In these cases, the excel file showed the parent record, and the "blank record" was the second child record, only it was blank for all fields EXCEPT the different value.

The way I solved it in my export solution was to sort by the primary key in my parent table, and in the export step, I choose "group by" my primary key during export. Warning: you have to choose the group by before you choose the primary key to export (why? I dunno, ask the filemaker gods). And the primary key does have to be in your export file, too.

After that, all my records showed up as expected, and no blank rows!

Feel free to contact me for clarification, if needed.

Cheers,

Tony

[Boot]

This is so great Tony. Even though it's months after your post, thanks heaps! You've saved me from the asylum.

For the sake of posterity and other searchers, this extra blank row problem also applies to HTML exports, and probably other formats too (CSV, XML etc).

Cheers, Craig

[Sonya]

Thank you Tony!

We were having the same problem (extra records created during export) with FM 17 in a couple of different formats (mer and csv), and checking "group by" my primary sorting key during export, as you recommended, worked nicely with no extra records, yay!

Take care and thank you again, -Sonya