SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

3723905 - Story Report Export Shows Unexpected Hyphens in Column Labels

Symptom

  • When exporting a Story Report to Excel or CSV, one or more column labels display unexpected hyphens (“-”) inside the text.
    • Inside SuccessFactors Story Reports, the label appears normal; however, after export, additional hyphens become visible.

Environment

SAP SuccessFactors Platform

  • Story Reports

Reproducing the Issue

  1. Open the affected Story Report.
  2. Create a new Story Report or edit an existing one.
  3. Add a field/column whose label was copied from an external source (e.g., web page, PDF, Word, email, Teams, etc.).
  4. Paste the label into the data source query builder by renaming.
  5. Save and run the Story Report.
  6. Export the results to Excel or CSV.
  7. Open the exported file and observe that the label contains unexpected hyphens.

Cause

The label contains invisible soft‑hyphen characters (Unicode U+00AD) that were introduced when the text was copied from an external application.

Soft hyphens are automatically inserted by many applications for line‑breaking or word‑wrapping purposes. They are not visible in the SuccessFactors UI, but when exported to Excel/CSV, these hidden characters are rendered as normal hyphens (“-”).

Common sources that insert soft hyphens include:

  • Web pages
  • PDFs
  • Microsoft Word documents
  • Emails
  • Microsoft Teams messages
  • Other applications with automatic line‑wrap formatting

As a result, Story Report labels may appear normal but still contain hidden Unicode characters that only surface during export.

Resolution

  1. Clean the Label Text
    • Copy the affected label text and paste it into a Unicode cleaning tools that can be found online.
    • This removes hidden soft‑hyphens (U+00AD) and other invisible formatting characters.
  2. Remove the Existing Label
    • In Story Reports, delete the old label from:
      • The data source field configuration (query designer)
  3. Reapply the Cleaned Label
    • Paste the cleaned text back into the label field.
    • Save the Story Report.
  4. Re-export to Confirm
    • Run the Story Report again and export to Excel/CSV.
    • The label will now export correctly without unwanted hyphens.

Keywords

story report, export to excel, export to csv, column labels, unexpected hyphens, hyphens, soft hyphen, unicode U+00AD, report formatting, label issue, story designer, data source query builder , KBA , LOD-SF-ANA-SAC-SDS , Story Designer - Story & Formatting , Problem

Product

SAP SuccessFactors Platform 2511