Lost Crosstab in active datasource, how to get it back?

[Former Member]

Dear BOAO Users,

a colleague from HR department reported an issue to me with this Excel workbook containing about 30 queries (using AO 1.4.1).

Randomly a crosstab is lost from time to time in his workbook (xlsx), and we don't know how to restore it:

Don't get me wrong: The datasource (DS_25) is still active and it can be refreshed without any error message!

(I also tried a macro to establish the system connection for this DS --> no error message, works normal).

Nevertheless not a single analysis function is available when clicking inside the table, where the report is located.

The crosstab seems to not exist anymore! And when I try to insert a new one, below the old query, AO shuts down with the well-known - but useless- error message that there was an exception in a datasource and SAP BI-Addin stopped all server connections 😞

Has anyone of you an idea how to restore the crosstab?

And how is it possible that a crosstab disappears at all - if not deleted manually?

Any feedback/help is appreciated.

Thanks, Martin

[former_member131154 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Activate the sheet/cell you want the new crosstab to start in.

Then you can simply do a right mouse click on the line of the datasource (DS_25) and then choose the second entry (Insert Crosstab / Kreuztabelle einfügen).

That will create a new crosstab for the datasource.

Hope that helps

Dirk Mayrock

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dirk,

thanks for your replies.

I will ask the user again if he maybe converted to formula by accident, but it didn't sound like... therfore I wanted to know if any other step could lead to the loss of it (except manually deleting it).

Regarding your proposal to insert a new cross-tab, I finally could make it, but I had to use a new blank sheet... because whenever I tried it on the old one, I got the error message again that there was an exception in a datasource and SAP BI-Addin stopped all server connections...

It looks like the problem was a: ' in the sheet name like: "ATZ'ler"

I removed it and then I was able to move the crosstab from the new sheet to the old sheet.

Thanks, Martin

[former_member131154 · Accepted solution]

Hi Martin,

to check if the user has converted it to formulas you simply click in any cell  where data is shown. if the real value is in it it is not converted, if you see a formula in it like SAPGetData then it was converted before.

To be honnest I cant imagine any other reason for "loosing" a crosstab. Maybe there is a problem in the tool itself. Are you on actual patches?

Dirk

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dirk,

no, there are no formulas in the cells, just the characteristic values and regular key figure numbers.

I have also no explanation, except that maybe Excel or AO cannot handle a workbook with >30 sheets and each of it containing a datasource/crosstab?

Or it was because of the special characters in the sheet name (I told the user not to use it anymore).

I will keep you updated when we found out the issue or are able to reproduce it consciously.

Thanks, Martin

[wernerju]

We have kind of the same problem.

If we schedule a converted AFO workbook (from BEx) then the crosstabs are lost. The datasources are still in it and I can create the crosstab again and put it on the sheet, but when we schedule it again they are also gone if we open it from Email.

So far we can see that we put the same queries in a new AFO workbook (no conversion from BEx) it is working fine. Crosstab generated out of data source is still there after you received the scheduled AFO workbook.

For our users it is painful, because they have lots of BEx workbooks they wanna schedule now on BI Launchpad.

Has anyone a solution or insight in this problem?

We would appreciate any help.

Thank you very much.

kr jux werner

[Former Member]

Hi all

i can remember, long time back, might be version 1.1 or 1.2. We had the same issue

with big workbooks ( lot of queries) all crosstabs vanished.

this issue was solved by SAP after we could find a re- producible example. Doing the same

action and all crosstab vanished. In 95% we couldn't reproduce the issue.

So my advice is to find one example which always drops the crosstabs and send this to sap.

how to get it back for now.

1) we made a copy of the workbook before usage. So in case crosstabs vanished we could use the backup.

2) put the mouse on original crosstab cell and create again under ds the crosstab.

This of course is a pain for end users .

which you the best

ralf

[Former Member]

Hello Martin,

we have the same problem within some workbooks. Crosstabs for some Datasources are missing, allthough there have been no manual deletion or converting into formulas.

Did you solve the problem anyway?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Best regards,

Gerardo

[Former Member]

Hi Gerardo,

still today the root cause of this bug is unclear to us, but I'm still on 1.4.14.

I don't know if it also happens under any 2.x version or not.

The solution is to refresh the DS_x with the missing crosstab in the components tab and then insert it again to the sheet.

BR, Martin

[stephen_hobbs2]

I have reported this several time to SAP with no real answer. They have mentioned other add-ins causing issues as well as the network dropping.

We are moving to 2.2 soon so i'll be interested to see if they have fixed it...

[former_member131154]

Hi again,

maybe the user used the "convert to formula" button on the crosstab... then it first looks like that the table is still there...

Dirk Mayrock