Author: Jakob Khazanovich
Updated: October 2024
Audience: Everyone
Environmental details: Jama Connect Cloud, CVC (all versions), Self-Hosted (all versions)
Summary
This article addresses common issues and questions to help Jama Connect® users develop, troubleshoot, and optimize exports using Office Templates. It supplements the Custom Word Template Easy Start Guide, which should be reviewed before reading this advanced article.
Office Templates can only be exported to Microsoft Word reports. Office Templates do not apply to MS Excel. See Export to Excel
Observations, Causes, and Solutions
Initial note
When troubleshooting Office Templates, it is essential to take an iterative approach. We recommend the report author make only a few changes at a time before re-uploading the template and testing the export to observe the impact of the changes.
Observation: |
Extra header lines in the document. |
Cause: |
Fields contain hidden rich text formatting. This is often caused by importing content from Word. |
Solution: |
Verify that the name field in your items does not contain hidden formatting by deleting and manually reentering the data. If this fixes the issue, do this for all affected items. |
Observation: |
Unexpected line breaks or missing line breaks |
Cause: |
Carriage returns in incorrect positions. |
Solution: |
Open your Office template and turn on the Paragraph button in Word. If you are missing line breaks in your export, add line breaks by pressing Shift+Enter. You should then see the line break (soft return) symbol. Add line breaks (Shift + Enter) in all locations where new line breaks are needed between exported content.
If you see line breaks where you don't want them in your export, delete the line break arrow symbol from your template to remove them. |
Observation: |
Missing line breaks |
Cause: |
Extra line breaks are removed by default when exporting data to improve the published document. However, this might cause consecutive tables to be combined. |
Solution: |
To restore line breaks to your previous exported results, you can apply a new parameter to the Report Parameter field in the template by following the instructions in the help guide here. |
Observation: |
The title page, header, and footer text are not changing even though Mail Merge field codes have been entered. |
Cause: |
Dynamic text for headers, footers, and title pages is limited to the report- and context-relevant fields shown at the beginning of the Default Word Template: Report Name, Report Description, Report Context Type, Report Context Name, Report Run By, Report Run On, Project Name, Project Manager, Organization Name, Report Context Tree Path. |
Solution: |
Any other dynamic text you would like to be in a header, such as document number, document name, and revision number, must be manually entered after export. Note: A Velocity report would be able to export dynamic headers. |
Observation: |
Boilerplate text is not populating after the Jama-exported content |
Cause: |
The static text from Jama must precede it. You cannot mix boilerplate content with dynamic content or put static content (like a revision table) at the end of an Office template. |
Solution: |
A workaround is to incorporate static text as text items in Jama and have them exported as part of the export. Note: Velocity reports can mix and match static and dynamic sections of the report. |
Observation: |
Items are not exporting in the desired order |
Cause: |
The order of content export into Word is per the content order in Jama, not the order of mail merge codes in the template. |
Solution: |
The content must be reordered within Jama before exporting. You may be able to reorder content by using a filter as the source of the export. Note: Velocity reports can export content in specified orders other than how they appear within the Jama explorer tree. |
Observation: |
Exported content is not changing even though mail merge codes were modified in the template. |
Cause: |
There are two common causes for this issue:
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Solution: |
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Observation: |
I want to use additional logic with Office Templates |
Cause: |
See below |
Solution: |
The following resources may assist users attempting advanced Office template use cases. They are not created or managed by Jama. Use at your discretion. |
More Help
Do you need help configuring your Office template, or do you want to learn more advanced options to overcome its limitations? Customers with Success Programs can request consultations or training in Basic Document Exports using Microsoft Word.
Related Articles
- Custom Word Template Easy Start Guide
- Basic Document Export Tutorials
- Request Custom Export Training using Velocity
- Request Jama Software to develop a custom Velocity report for your team
- Differences Between Office Template Exports and Reports
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