Here's the bug:

I'm exporting some records from FileMaker 8.5v2 to excel. Some cells have data in them some cells are empty.

I open the excel file in Office 2008 and 2003, latest updates applied, and select any row and apply a colored background. I save the document and when I reopen it the cells that are empty don't retain the formatting.

Don't suggest these fixes, I already tried these, with no success:

- did a "save as..." so as to work on a "new" file

- copy and pasted the data from FileMaker excel file to a new excel file (no formatting, just as pure text with the special paste command)

- opened an empty, brand new excel document and colored some cells for testing, they work and stay colored, but not with FileMaker data

Edited December 12, 200817 yr by Guest

no one? really?

Really Really. Try a different version of FileMaker?

I tried all versions of FileMaker (7, 8, 8A, 8.5, 8.5A, 9, 9A) with updates applied, on both Mac and PC.

Sure its and FileMaker issues? Unless I'm missing something sounds like the problem is with Excel. What version of Excel are you using?

happens both in 2003 and 2008. The issue is with the way filemaker creates the excel file.

I think you'll find this is an undocumented feature in Excel. I don't remember the exact details but I had a problem with formatting empty cells in Excel 2003 - it just wouldn't take properly. I remember! (I think) I formatted a group of numeric, or maybe date, fields; the group included some empty cells. When I entered data into the empty cells, the data stayed unformatted. Sorry to be so vague but formatting was the least of my worries at the time.