SharePoint User Group UK

This might be a little bit of a rant, but am I the only person that finds it absolutley stupid that Excel Web Services hosted in SharePoint cannot render an Excel Spreadsheet (Stored in the same SharePoint site) that uses a SharePoint 2007 list as source data? (From the same SharePoint site?)

Surely this one option would have made reporting on SharePoint list data a whole lot easier?

I have to provide a report that scans a document library and provides KPI measurements against targets, and yet the only way to drag this data into the Spreadsheet is to use a custom UDF to pull the data in, rather than the nice and easy Export to Spreadsheet and then create an ODC file?

I'm intrigued if there was method to this madness?

</rant>

Paul.

Unable to Load Workbook The workbook that you selected cannot be loaded because it contains the following features that are not supported by Excel Services: SharePoint lists Contact the workbook author.

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www.myfatblog.co.uk
MCTS: WSS 3.0
MCTS: MOSS 2007

I completely agree with your issues on Excel Svcs. To me, MS has made Excel Svcs way to confusing to configure and use. There has got to be a better way!
This is yet another area where an OpenSource approach would benifit the MOSS community. But, MS will never allow it as Excel Svcs is the carrot that move MOSS customers into the Enterprise License.

I just can't believe that possibly one of the most fundamental uses for Excel Services was overlooked. The ability to use SharePoint Lists as a source of information for Excel reports would have made reporting on SharePoint data 10 times easier than it is. (I've looked at using UDFs to pull the dat in, and this works nicely, however you need to know the size of the returned array at design time, something that just isn't possible with my data.)

I've been on a few forums over the last 24 hours and it would appear that Microsoft have seen a large demand forming for access to SharePoint lists in EWS and this may form part of the next SP.. (I won't hold my breathe tho!)

Paul.

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www.myfatblog.co.uk
MCTS: WSS 3.0
MCTS: MOSS 2007