Hi Raja,

You are right, this is a limitation from our Table Tools Export.

The table tools functionalities are based on a 3rd party HTML5 library and they are not customizable. Unfortunately, the library allows very little “fine-tuning” of the generated files, so font, size, and other properties cannot be changed.

You can check the full list of limitations on the hyperlinked Documentation for it, but in short, when it comes to any kind of formatting or style - it is as you found, it is not capable of retaining the formatting.

Additionally, other front-end extensions cannot be combined with Table Tools. 

If you have row grouping enabled for the table, or there are some customizations you did yourself, they won’t be reflected in the generated Excel, CSV, or PDF document, nor in the clipboard.

The Table tools do have the option to include HTML during export, but then again, Excel or Word are not capable of rendering custom HTML in the cell.

The “Include HTML” option will allow you to export columns that contain HTML (such as link, image, email, attachment, or HTML). They will be rendered as HTML in the exported files of the CSV, Excel, Print, and Copy options.

This option is currently not available for the PDF export option.

Please note that you should check this functionality on the front-end since if you use this option in the back-end the buttons in headers will be rendered as HTML as well.

So, you can try just to see if it looks better with that option enabled, but I believe that Excel/or Word won't be able to render custom HTML like that, it can only be rendered like this through our integration from the Form in the table.

2. When it comes to the Report Builder, I am afraid it is also not capable of maintaining the formatting and visual style when the cell value gets exported to a Word or Excel Document, but we are double-checking this with our QA Team, they will do additional tests to make sure.

As soon as we confirm this, we will report back right away.

Thank you for your patience.

Hi Raja,

Thank you for your patience, we got an update, our developers advised about the Report builder.

When you use the Report Builder, you can only customize the look of your template document and then the data will be exported in that way.

Here are a couple of screenshots to visualise what they meant :

So, the way how you customize the template document ( Word or Excel) is going to be the way how the export will come out, if that makes sense and if we understood what you meant to achieve.

Let us know if that helps, or if we misunderstood the issue.

Thank you.

Hi Raja,

I just went through the entire ticket again, and it seems we might have misunderstood what you meant to achieve.

Basically, as far as I see from your comparison screenshots, our Forminator integration is rendering the Repeater Field's cell value with that 'custom HTML + CSS formatting' to make it look like a 'mini table' of its own, for example the "Invoice Date" has its own 'mini header' and two rows of 'repeating dates' one below another, etc, as the rest of the data in it...

While, in your Excel from the Report Builder it renders it all on the same line :

As we mentioned, the only way you can try to achieve a different result in terms of how the exported data will look in Report Builder is to customize the look of your cells in the Template Document ( Excel or Word);

then the data should render like that.

So, see if you can try to 'vertically expand' the cell in your Excel template where you insert the Column variable for Report Builder ( such as ${Items} for example);

and see if that achieves it to render the data in multiple lines.

You can also try with a Word Template, try to customize/format that space on the Template where the value will be passed and see if that helps.

If none of that helps, we, unfortunately, don't currently have a way to change this logic.

Our Forminator integration is made to render those Repeater values like that and format them via our own custom HTML + CSS code in the table cell, but for it to then get passed to the Report Builder, we can create a task for the future, but I can't say an ETA when that might get achieved.

If you wish to affect that improvement development speed, you can upvote or create a new suggestion.

Please feel free to search on our suggestions page, 

 to see if someone may be already suggested this feature. If you can't see it, feel free to add your suggestion there,  and as more people vote, the feature will move higher on the priority list.

You can certainly follow our changeLog page if you'd like ( it is also available in the plugin dashboard), where we state any changes/new features/bug fixes during updates;

and our newsletter, so you're informed about new features, bug fixes, freebies, etc.