This week’s Tech Tuesday is from our Support Guru, Jared Dux, who will go through a consistent issue that as been brought to his attention regarding SmartLists failing to export.

Recently I have seen this come up several times in my cases and it can be a bit puzzling and frustrating users. When running a SmartList you will sometimes see random characters similar to the screenshot below. If you refresh the list, the characters will likely be gone or seem to have moved to a different record. 

When these characters are present in SmartList, Excel will likely fail to open the file depending on what the characters are because the file is not completed and remains in use by Dynamics GP.

I have found the issue to be related to custom views using joins that are returning NULLs. Microsoft Dynamics GP does not handle the NULLs which is causing the random characters. Depending on how many records and fields are set to display increases the probability of the invalid characters showing up. 

Use the ISNULL() function on any fields that have the possibility of returning NULLs to set them to be blank. This will stop the random characters and allow Excel to open the exported files. 

Have any questions regarding SmartList or SmartList Builder? Feel free to reach out to us at sales@eonesolutions.com!