FAQ-Excel Round Trip
If you have a wiki text in Codebeamer like the description of the issues/tickets an export these to Excel then what you will see in Excel is the plain wiki text instead of nicely formatted rich text like bold/colors/fonts/images etc.
Why? This is simply because Excel has a very limited rich-text capabilities for formatting in Excel cells. It can do some formatting like boldness or colored text, but that is far from supporting complete capabilities of the HTML rendering that we use when we render the wiki to a web page.
Therefore it is technically impossible to properly export a wiki/HTML to Excel which looks nice and same to what you see inside Codebeamer.
So we just decide to export the wiki source to Excel: which can be nicely imported back from Excel in a roundtrip scenario.
If we would try to downgrade the wiki/HTML to the capabilities of the Excel then this would result in corrupting the wiki/HTML data when you import this text back to Codebeamer.
That's why it is recommended to use Word for exporting/importing wiki/HTML which contains lots of rich text or heavy formatting instead of Excel. Word's internal markup capabilities is close to the capabilities of HTML, therefore the roundtrip is mostly and nicely works there.
FAQ
1. Can I delete specific columns in the Round-Trip Excel file?
Yes, you can delete any columns, but you have to keep the unique Codebeamer ID, Codebeamer name, description, and any other configured mandatory fields from the tracker.
2. Can I add additional columns in the Round-Trip Excel file?
Yes, you can add additional fields in the Round-Trip file. You will need to customize the tracker fields to import the columns into the correct field.
3. What can I change in the Round-Trip Excel file?
You can change any field except the unique Codebeamer ID. Excel does not support rich text with images. Images in the Excel description can be imported, but Round-Trip wouldn't work.
4. How do I import the Description field as plain-text or HTML?
When importing new data, select the format for the Description field from the Input menu. Click Plain Text if your data is not wiki. Click plain text or HTML if your data is HTML.
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This setting is overridden by if you map the description format field to an import column: then you can also import mixed content when some row is wiki some are plain text by putting the appropriate format to that column.
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5. Why is there a gap between each row when exporting items?
You have a reference, choice, and user field with multiple values and each value appears and adds a new line in the export file. To change the default settings, see Configuring Excel Export Default Settings.
Multi-value appears in the Excel export as follows:
6. Why is the ID field not mapped automatically during import?
If Codebeamer generates the Excel file (round-trip Excel), the ID field from the Excel import is not mapped automatically. Otherwise, the ID is not mapped, but a user can map.
7. Why are there hidden columns in the Excel import that are not loaded?
The hidden columns are not imported by default.
However, if the Excel sheet contains hidden columns, select the Import Hidden Columns checkbox, and the hidden column's data will appear.
