Visio Reports: Export to Excel sucks

[cactuslover]

The export to Excel always includes:
1) a merged header row, which is *useless* and impedes any analysis.
2) Huge font that is right justified, which I have to fix.

So, I have to remove the header row, set column widths to something reasonable (12), left justify, and change the font size.

Does anyone have a fix for this, besides the obvious of creating Excel macros?  Is Microsoft aware that it is wasting so much of my time on this?  Please share your thoughts.
--J

[Yacine]

You're absolutely right.
In fact the reports suck so much, that every one using them on a regular basis will write his own tools.

Here are some possibilities:
1) Reformat the excel sheet by means of a VBA macro within Visio. Launching the macro to be either done manually (convert a selected excel object) or automatically - haven't done this before, but could imagine that the appropriate event could be caught, then the reformating routine started.
2) Export you shape data to excel, then reformat within excel and re-import to Visio.
3) The "King path" ( ) - Export the data to Access and profit there from its great report capabilities (grouping, calculations, etc.). For my part, I kept the reports outside the drawings and just attach the PDFs to the drawing. One could however think about pasting images (other other types) of the reports back into Visio.

HTH,
Y.