Export a list or a plot to Excel
Any list and any chart on a portal or a dashboard can be handed to Excel as an .xlsx file.
There is nothing to switch on first and nothing to ask an administrator for: the export is part
of the list and the chart.
What you get is what you were looking at — the columns the view carries, the rows left after your filtering, in the order you sorted them. It is not the whole underlying M-Files view.
From a list
Section titled “From a list”Open the ⋯ menu in the toolbar above the list, next to the Filter button, and choose Export to Excel. The file downloads under the name of the list.
A list that can also be shown as a calendar, a kanban board or a gantt chart has three export choices in that menu rather than one:
| Choice | What it exports |
|---|---|
| Export full dataset | Every row the view loaded, ignoring the filters you have applied |
| Export filtered | The rows left after your filters and your search |
| Export selected | The rows you have selected. Offered only while something is selected |
From a chart
Section titled “From a chart”Point at the chart. Its toolbar appears in the top corner; choose Export to Excel there.
The file holds the numbers the chart is drawn from rather than a picture of it: one sheet per series, the category down the first column and the plotted value beside it. A series drawn as a hierarchy carries the parent of each category as well.
To get the objects behind a single bar, slice or point rather than the totals, click that point first. It opens a table of the objects it was calculated from, and that table has the same ⋯ menu with Export to Excel on it.
What lands in the file
Section titled “What lands in the file”- The visible columns, in the order they are shown. A column the view does not carry is not in the file, and there is no setting that adds one.
- Every row that survived filtering, not only the page on screen. Paging is display, so a filtered list of 400 rows exports all 400 while 25 of them are showing.
- The values as the list shows them, with icons and links reduced to their text. The one place the file holds more than the screen does is a cell of several linked objects: the list shortens it to a few values and a “+5 more” link, and the export writes out every value.
- Numbers as numbers, so Excel can sum and sort them. A code that happens to be digits — one with a leading zero, or longer than fifteen digits — stays text so that it is not mangled. Dates arrive as the text the client displayed, which Excel treats as text until the column is converted.
- A sheet per series from a chart, each one a real Excel table with a frozen header row and filter buttons, ready to sort and total.
What the export does not do
Section titled “What the export does not do”- It does not link back to M-Files. The file is a snapshot taken when you chose the export. Nothing you change in it returns to the vault, and it does not update when the objects do — export again when the figures have moved on.
- It does not widen what you can see. A portal reads M-Files as you, so the file can only hold objects your permissions already allow. A colleague with fewer rights exporting the same list gets a shorter file, and that is correct rather than a fault.
- It does not run on the server. The file is built in the client from data already on screen, so a list of many thousands of rows takes a moment to produce.
If several people need to work on the exported file rather than on separate copies of it, CtrlShare shares a single file with internal and external users.