Hi Sebastian. How a report comes out in Excel depends on the layout of the report you are exporting. If the report is in a straight row/column format, this is how it will display in Excel as well. Otherwise, Excel cannot determine where one column starts and another begins and may put them all in one column.

but is there a way to get reports in excel format initally? i.e. I want to get a job costing report in excel so that i can filter by cost codes etc. I understand what you are talking about re the collumns, that is the format of the reports when downloading off of Sage

If you are talking about getting the information directly from the database into Excel, you may be able to use an ODBC connection to do that (Sage does not offer support on setting that up). There is also an integration solution called Sage Intelligence Reporting that will output data directly into Excel

Try doing using the inquiry option in Job Cost and choose All Entries.  Exporting Inquiries to excel are much better to work with in excel than exporting reports.  I use this to sort and filer by cost codes, jobs, transaction types, vendors, PO's or any other field that is available by adding columns.  Once you start using this option there is another add on module, Inquiry Designer, that will save the formats.

Try doing using the inquiry option in Job Cost and choose All Entries.  Exporting Inquiries to excel are much better to work with in excel than exporting reports.  I use this to sort and filer by cost codes, jobs, transaction types, vendors, PO's or any other field that is available by adding columns.  Once you start using this option there is another add on module, Inquiry Designer, that will save the formats.