Image not appearing in excel/PDF

[ranjaniganesh30]

When reports are downloaded as excel/pdf from report studio, the embedded image does not appear('X' appears in place of the image). Need a resolution for this. Thanks!

[MFGF]

When reports are downloaded as excel/pdf from report studio, the embedded image does not appear('X' appears in place of the image). Need a resolution for this. Thanks!

Hi,

What do you mean by "the embedded image"? Is it an image you added to the report? What mechanism did you use, if so? What URL did you use? What version of Cognos 10 are you using?

MF.

[ranjaniganesh30]

The image is picked from a URL on the same server.

[MFGF]

The image is picked from a URL on the same server.

Ok. That's a partial answer. There are some other important things you haven't answered though:

What URL did you use? What version of Cognos 10 are you using?

MF.

[MDXpressor]

Let me preface this entire thread by stating that Cognos + images + excel is not equal to easily consumed data in excel. 

Images are sized and placed in Cells.  This sizing drives the cell width for the entire column.  So, if you place a wide image in cell A1, your entire A column is going to be at least as wide as your image.  There are tricks to circumvent this, but as a whole, exporting to excel is meant for a single purpose, further manipulating your report's data.  For this type of exercise, images are rarely useful, and doing this type of exercise for branding purposes is generally a complete waste of effort.  I have been refusing to include image content in excel to my customers for better part of 15 years.  HTML or PDF are the places for images.  Excel is a place to further refine data, and include 'offline' data for further calculations.  For the most part, you can't calculate an image, so what relevance does it have in excel?

Having said that, just putting the image on the Cognos server does not ensure that you are going to be able to reach it in all types of applications.  This is why MF was looking for further information. 

• Try loading a common image directly into excel, such as the google logo.  Does that work?




• If it does, then something is wrong with your image specifically, move on to the next step.
• If it doesn't, your version of excel is not playing nicely with web imagery in general. Fix excel and try it again.


• Try loading your image into a web browser.  Does that work?




• If it does then & your excel can load the google image, then you have an actual Cognos issue.
• If it doesn't then your image is not exposed by IIS on the Cognos server. Try moving your image to <install directory>/webcontent/samples/images as this directory is already exposed to the web by Cognos

[MFGF]

Let me preface this entire thread by stating that Cognos + images + excel is not equal to easily consumed data in excel. 

Images are sized and placed in Cells.  This sizing drives the cell width for the entire column.  So, if you place a wide image in cell A1, your entire A column is going to be at least as wide as your image.  There are tricks to circumvent this, but as a whole, exporting to excel is meant for a single purpose, further manipulating your report's data.  For this type of exercise, images are rarely useful, and doing this type of exercise for branding purposes is generally a complete waste of effort.  I have been refusing to include image content in excel to my customers for better part of 15 years.  HTML or PDF are the places for images.  Excel is a place to further refine data, and include 'offline' data for further calculations.  For the most part, you can't calculate an image, so what relevance does it have in excel?

Having said that, just putting the image on the Cognos server does not ensure that you are going to be able to reach it in all types of applications.  This is why MF was looking for further information. 

• Try loading a common image directly into excel, such as the google logo.  Does that work?




• If it does, then something is wrong with your image specifically, move on to the next step.
• If it doesn't, your version of excel is not playing nicely with web imagery in general. Fix excel and try it again.


• Try loading your image into a web browser.  Does that work?




• If it does then & your excel can load the google image, then you have an actual Cognos issue.
• If it doesn't then your image is not exposed by IIS on the Cognos server. Try moving your image to <install directory>/webcontent/samples/images as this directory is already exposed to the web by Cognos

The reason I asked abut the version of Cognos 10 being used is that I remember there being an issue with rendering images using absolute URLs in (I think) 10.1. At the time, the workaround was to switch to relative URLs. That's why I also asked about what URL was being used. Sadly these questions remain unanswered for now - information seems to be very difficult to obtain. We have been given a very non-specific issue and there is not enough detail in the question to be able to provide a guaranteed solution. For some unfathomable reason, ranjaniganesh30 seems very reluctant to provide any details. Great advice here though, Mr. H! :)

MF.

[Karti]

I ran into an issue i the past where my images weren't rendering in PDF format, and were just giving me the red X.

Are your Gateway and Application Tier/Content Manager portions of the BI Server installation on separate machines/folders? If so, you need to have your images in the <cognos installation>/webcontent/samples/images folder on both machines/folder structures.