SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

2849190 - '#NAME' is Displayed When Downloading Report to Excel

Symptom

You downloaded a Business Analytics report in Excel format ('.csv' or '.xls'). When opening the report in Excel, some fields are displaying '#NAME' instead of the actual value.

Environment

SAP Cloud for Customer

SAP Business ByDesign

Reproducing the Issue

  1. Go to the Business Analytics work center.
  2. Go to the Design Reports work center view.
  3. Find and open report ABC ('ABC' represents the report name).
  4. Click report Options > Download > 'Report as CSV (*.csv)' OR 'Microsoft Excel (*.xlsx)').
  5. Open the downloaded file in Excel.
  6. Some fields are displaying '#NAME' rather than the actual values.

Cause

The behavior described above is standard in MS Excel and occurs when reading any cell values that start with the special character "=" (equal), since MS Excel automatically interprets it as a formula.

Resolution

If having cell in the report starting with character "=" is unavoidable, you can use the "Find and Replace" resource from Excel to remove all the "=" characters, thus addressing the behavior. This is how you can do it:

  1. In the Excel report with the undesired behavior, go to the Home tab in Excel.
  2. Click "Find & Select" option.
  3. Click "Replace".
  4. Under "Replace" tab, type = in 'Find what:' text box.
  5. Do not type anything in the 'Replace with:' text box.
  6. Click Find All.
  7. Click "Replace All".
  8. Click OK and then close the Replace window.
  9. The cells that were displaying #NAME should not be displaying the expected value.

* It is also possible that Excel interprets cells beginning with plus (+) and minus (-) characters as formulas as well. To address that you can refer to the same steps above, only adjusting the character to be replaced ('+', '-', or '='). For assistance on additional alternatives to address this MS Excel behavior you may refer to Microsoft support as this is a behavior from the MS software rather than SAP system.

See Also

 If you need – symbol, then the value can be prefixed with space and then –. For example instead of “- CDE” you can use “ – CDE” (CDE stands for the entered value).

Keywords

#NAME; Report cell incorrect; Excel issue; Excel value wrong; Excel Report; Report #NAME; , KBA , report #name , report cell incorrect , #name , excel value wrong , excel error , excel report , excel issue , AP-RC-ANA , C4C, ByD, Travel: Analytics Tools & Frameworks , AP-RC-UIF , C4C UI Framework , How To

Product

SAP Business ByDesign all versions ; SAP Cloud for Customer add-ins all versions ; SAP Cloud for Customer core applications all versions