Problem

The OfficeWriter Designer keeps prompting to publish the report when attempting to view the report from Excel. This happens even when the report is retrieved from the server and no changes are made to the report before trying to preview.

Solution

How View in the OfficeWriter Designer works

When the View button is clicked, the OfficeWriter Designer does several things:

1. If the report has not been published, prompt the user to save and publish the report.
2. If a previously published report has been changed in Excel, prompt the user to save and re-publish
3. Make a request to Reporting Services to export/render the published report using the OfficeWriter renderer (OfficeWriter for Excel)
4. Download a copy of the rendered report and open in Excel

In order for the OfficeWriter Designer to view a report, the most updated version of the report must be published to the server.

Designer still prompts when no changes have been made to the report

Certain Excel features, such as macros and pivottables, can be set to automatically execute or update when the workbook is opened. This is considered to be a change to the file, even though there are no visible changes to the report.

The OfficeWriter Designer uses the same logic as Excel when determining if a change has been made to the file. This means that any time Excel would prompt a user to save changes made to a file, the OfficeWriter Designer will prompt to publish the changes to the server.

For example, if a report contains a pivottable that is set to update the data when the workbook opens, Excel will interpret this a change to the file, even though it appears as though nothing has changed. In this case, the Designer will ask the user to publish the report before the View function can be run.

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