Is there an easy way to give an option to open Excel on export form SSRS reportviewer control?

Question

If we export to Excel from the ReportingServices reports web site, the user gets an option to Open/Save/Cancel. However, the reportviewer control for winforms does not give the Open option. The user has to save the file and then open it manually.

I'm wondering if someone else has already crossed this bridge and might be able to save me some time. I'm fairly confident that we could use some of the reportviewer events and add some office automation to open Excel. I was just hoping to avoid that.

Any ideas are appreciated.

One note, showing the RS web site in a browser window isn't really an option because we build the datasources programmatically and the the report is local, not on the RS server.

Answer 1

Hi,

I think your best option is to automate the save and open through code. In short, save the report to the user's temp directory and then use the .Net call to start Excel as process; passing it the file path to the copy which was saved in the temp directory.

Hope this helps,

Bill