3548029 - Performance Difference Between CSV and XLSX Report Downloads in Business Analytics

Excel file downloads are slower compared to CSV downloads for the same report data.

• SAP Business ByDesign
• SAP Cloud for Customer

Navigate to Business Analytics -> Design Reports and open any report. Download it in both CSV and XLSX formats and compare the download times.

CSV downloads are faster because the format does not include any data type metadata — data is written as plain text. XLSX downloads are slower because Excel processes each cell individually and stores data type information (e.g., number, date, text) alongside the cell value, which increases processing time.

This is expected behavior. CSV format is inherently faster to generate because it contains no cell-level metadata. Excel (XLSX) format processes data cell by cell and includes data type information for each cell, which requires additional time to produce.  

Download performance depends on several factors (for example, concurrent system activities, active background jobs, local internet speed). As a result, download times may vary between attempts, and a successful download cannot be tied to an exact number of records.

To reduce download time for either format, apply report filters to limit the volume of data before downloading.

2366796 - Best Practices for Modelling and Handling Data Sources and Reports - Performance https://me.sap.com/notes/2366796

KBA , AP-RC-ANA , C4C, ByD, Travel: Analytics Tools & Frameworks , Problem

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