Cognos Scheduled Report in EXCEL Format Not Being Delivered Via Email

[barathi80]

We're using Cognos 10.2 and I'm trying to deliver a scheduled report  in Excel format as an attachment. When I run the Schedule it completes successfully but I didn't get any email . when I change the format other than excel I am getting the emails with attachment. so the issue is only with the Excel output format. Tried all the options nothing worked.. :( :( please help here

Note - only Excel 2007 is not working

[smiley]

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21968078

[barathi80]

Thanks for your reply.

Now we found that emails with Cognos generated excel files are not going through. our email team found that the network detects the cognos generated Excel file as Malware and it delete any emails with those attachment thats why our emails are not going through.

They are asking us to look in to Cognos and change the way cognos generates excel. Is there any way to change it in cognos ? please help

[bdbits]

Why don't they just allow them through if they originate from your Cognos server? Do you need them to be in 2007 format, if others work?

There are a few Excel-related options you can set, but without knowing why they are being seen as malware it is difficult to say if they would make a difference (probably not).

[barathi80]

Thanks all for your reply and help.
I have applied these settings in our environment but still we are not getting the files.  I noticed one thing not but sure whether this is common across all environments. When my scheduled reports ran and when I try to save that file in to my system it has the file name as
"Visibility 2016-07-10T17_39_16.409Z" . I am not sure why the file name have 'Z' in that and it may be the reason our network detects as Malware.

Please let me know how to change the files names that generated like these. Is there any setting to change the file names ?? 

• 
  RSVP.EXCEL.EXCEL_2007_LARGE_WORKSHEET
  RSVP.EXCEL.XLS2007_ALLOW_WRAPPING_SINGLE_CELL
  RSVP.FILE.EXTENSION.XLS

[dougp]

I would guess that the email server would not recognize the *.409Z extension.  My experience with Exchange is that it will let it through.  It doesn't like things like *.exe and *.zip, which need to be renamed (to *.abc or something else nondescript) to make it through the filter.

I'm pretty sure what you are seeing here has absolutely nothing to do with Cognos.  It's a matter of configuring the email system to work properly.  Do you have competent email admins?

[bdbits]

Are you hiding extensions and it is actually .MHT or .HTML? That could explain it, see this tech note to get them sent as xls (10.x instructions are down the page).

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21342065

[barathi80]

Thanks all for your reply and help,

Our email found that when cognos generated excel 2007 files goes in email the server treat them as .Jar file and it deletes that email. so they asked me to change the way the file is getting generated. we have SSRS environment as well where we dont have any issue there so its only with cognos generated excel 2007 files.

I set this parameter RSVP.FILE.EXTENSION.XLS to TRUE but its only working for Excel 2002 still we are not getting excel 2007. Is there any other parameters or setting that we need to change. Since we dont have IBM support I am not able to raise PMR as well.

its became business critical issue now since none of these reports are not getting delivered. please help

[dougp]

Is SSRS sending Excel 2007 files?  Keep in mind that Excel 2007 (xlsx) is a compressed set of XML files.  If SSRS is sending binary xls files, that could be the difference.

I have no idea why the email server would think that a file with a xlsx extension that contains compressed XML is a jar file.  You may need to learn how to manage the email server so you can educate your email admins.

[barathi80]

Thanks for your reply ,

Yes SSRS is sending in Excel 2007 , the problem is only with Cognos generated Excel 2007 files. they are asking me to look in to  the Excel file generation in cognos.

When I apply this parameter  RSVP.FILE.EXTENSION.XLS to TRUE its working fine for Excel 2002 where the file comes as .mht in email and due to the above parameter it comes with .xls extension but the same is not working for Excel 2007.

Any idea why its not working for Excel 2007 ? is there any other setting need to be changed ??

please help

[MFGF]

Thanks for your reply ,

Yes SSRS is sending in Excel 2007 , the problem is only with Cognos generated Excel 2007 files. they are asking me to look in to  the Excel file generation in cognos.

When I apply this parameter  RSVP.FILE.EXTENSION.XLS to TRUE its working fine for Excel 2002 where the file comes as .mht in email and due to the above parameter it comes with .xls extension but the same is not working for Excel 2007.

Any idea why its not working for Excel 2007 ? is there any other setting need to be changed ??

please help

Hi,

As stated above by dougp, this isn't a Cognos issue - it's the way your admins have configured your network. Cognos generates Excel 2007 in the way it does, and I don't know of any way you can change this other than by writing your own excel rendering solution using the Cognos SDK. I'm guessing such a task is beyond the budget and perhaps even skills of your project, so you're going to have to go back to your network Admins and insist they do their job and fix the issue with your network incorrectly identifying Excel attachments in Cognos as malware.

Just my opinion, of course :)

MF.