How to break the 96dpi barrier when exporting reports containing SSRS Chart objects to Excel or Word ?

I'd like to export an SSRS 2012 report containing various standard/simple SSRS charts, to Excel/Word and PDF formats. Users want to open the Excel or Word versions and copy the chart images out to use in presentations etc. The problem is an old one : charts look ok in PDF but are really low-resolution in Word/Excel (96dpi I think), so look really grainy and are not of acceptable quality. I believe the problem is that the renderers for Excel/Word are hard coded to 96dpi.

After a lot of googling I haven't seen any practical solution, in any version of SSRS up to 2014. I am considering use of Nevron Charts for this, since a higher chart DPI can be chosen (and works). However, that means converting all the existing charts to use a 3rd party component which developers will have to learn, and buy and maintain the component etc , which is a lot of effort considering that I just want a higher dpi. Writing my own custom component or renderer is out of the question in this case.

I'm not getting why MS has never addressed this issue, especially since the Dundas chart components from which MS derived theirs did seem to have such a setting years ago (as does Nevron). So i ask this :

1. Does anyone have any experience or a real solution to this issue ?

2. Anyone know if this issue has been addressed in SSRS 2016 ? I cannot tell from CTP 2.2 whether its handled since there's no SSDT-BI tooling available yet anyway. (Mention of higher dpi seems to be restricted to display on high dpi screens).

3. Are there practical alternatives to Nevron which are still being actively developed ?

Any information or insights appreciated.

July 30th, 2015 2:49pm

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your question. 

I am trying to involve someone more familiar with this topic for a further look at this issue. Sometime delay might be expected from the job transferring. Your patience is greatly appreciated. 

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Best regards,
Qiuyun Yu

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July 31st, 2015 7:46am

Hi Qiuyun,

Any update on this one ?

August 5th, 2015 2:57pm

Hi Steve,

The behavior you described is by design. And I verified that it behaves the same way in SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.2, sorry about that.

There is no graceful workaround as far as I know beside what you mentioned.

I'm not sure if export it as MHTML is an option. The MHTML format keeps a relatively high resolution chart image, but you can also open it in Word to edit it if you need to make changes. (I know this isn't a good option.)

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August 11th, 2015 1:12am

Hi SQL Team,

Thankyou for the response and for confirming the behaviour in CTP 2.2 of SQL Server 2016. It's not very satisfying. "The behaviour ... is by design" - apparently rather poor design. Looks like there's no plans to ever give SSRS high image-quality charts, or develop SSRS much at all.

Therefore my follow-on question: Which reporting tool should we be using to achieve this (high quality chart-images reports exported in Excel or Word format) ? e.g. I've got an SQL Server database , and I want to make a paginated report from the data in it, that looks nice in PDF but can also be exported to word/excel so that users can take components out and include them in their own presentations etc. ?  Whats the strategy ?

August 11th, 2015 2:30am

Hi Steve,

Have you heard Power View before? Which allows you to share the reports through SharePoint sites, Excel workbooks, and you can also export the report as PowerPoint presentations. You can take a quick glance at the following articles:

Power View: Explore, visualize, and present your data
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Power-View-Explore-visualize-and-present-your-data-98268D31-97E2-42AA-A52B-A68CF460472E

Charts and other visualizations in Power View
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Charts-and-other-visualizations-in-Power-View-141bd462-9853-4973-ac37-842e8345f51e

Pie charts in Power View
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/pie-charts-in-Power-View-aeb2aeee-075e-43ff-b435-9db73d299a7b

Best Practices in Data Visualization
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_business_intelligence1/archive/2012/10/08/best-practices-in-data-visualization.aspx

.

Here is another 3rd-party product that export the chart as a chart instead of a static image.

OfficeWriter for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
http://www.officewriter.com/officewriter-for-sql-server-reporting-services.aspx

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August 12th, 2015 11:30pm

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