BusinessObjects - export cells as 'general'

I created a variable in BusinessObjects that's just an Excel formula. That's all fine, but when I export my report to Excel, it formats the cells as 'Text' but I want it to format them as 'General' (and ideally automatically apply my formula).

Any idea how to make this happen?

To start with I wanted to create the formula in BusinessObjects, but it's a hyperlink to an external application, so I'm pretty sure it must be an Excel formula.

I've gone through all format options and can't find anything to change it.

I don't think you can build an Excel formula in Web Intelligence and have it work in Excel after export.

Since it ultimately seems like you want a hyperlink just build that in WebI.

Disclaimer: I am not a web developer. I may not use the exact proper terminology. Also, there may be multiple (and better) ways to do this, but this is how we have done it.

Create a variable that builds an HTML Tag. I have found that I need to escape the double-quotes needed within it.

="<a href=\"https://YourBaseURL" + [SomeObject] + "\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" nav=\"web\">" + [SomeObject] + "</a>"

Then just add that new variable to your table and change the properties of that column to “HTML” or “Hyperlink”.

I am not sure of the difference (HTML vs. Hyperlink) or if it matters in this case.

Hopefully, that gets you started and you can adjust this approach to meet your needs.

Noel