Since this is my very first blog entry on SDN, I first probably should briefly introduce myself. My name is Erwin Tenhumberg, and I recently joined SAP. In my role as an Open Source Program Manager in the Global Ecosystem and Partner Group I'm looking into all kinds of Open Source related topics. Before I joined SAP, I worked at Sun Microsystems where I was deeply involved in Open Source as well. At Sun my focus areas included OpenOffice.org and the OpenDocument Format (ODF) in addition to things like Open Source business models. In this and future blog entries I want to explain how various SAP products integrate with different open source technologies. In addition, I hope that you will write comments to my blog entries, so that I can get a better understanding of the level of open source technology support that SAP customers and developers would like to see within SAP products. Finally, I will use my blog to report about SAP's contributions to the Open Source world like SAP's contributions to Eclipse or the Open Source related investments by SAP Ventures. Due to my past involvement in OpenOffice.org and ODF, I was curious to find out if and where the SAP products already support the ISO standard OpenDocument Format. I was happily surprised when I found out that ODF is already supported by the SAP List Viewer component (also known as the ABAP List Viewer or ALV), which is used many many times in all kinds of areas for displaying tabular data in a grid. The SAP List Viewer component allows exporting to ODF spreadsheet files in addition to Microsoft Excel files. This feature is available on systems with release numbers 6.40 and higher and works for all 3 members of the SAP GUI family including the SAP GUI for Java. For more details about the feature please take a look at the SAP Note 876916 (https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/876916)! For example, this SAP Note lists details about supported releases and required support packages. In order to illustrate how this feature works, I provide some kind of step-by-step tutorial including screenshots below. I first thought about doing a screencast, which I still might decide to do later, but then I realized that it might be easier for others to test the feature, if they can easily follow each single step. But don't worry! The export feature is very easy to use and intuitive. For the simple test / demo I will use a simple test report that should be available on every system. Thus, it should be easy for everybody to test the feature. O.k., let's get started! First, a SAP GUI has to be started, and one has to login into a system. Again, please keep in mind that the release number has to be 6.40 or higher. 
After the ABAP Editor has been started via the transaction SE38, we enter the report name "BCALV_TEST_GRID" ... 
... and click the "Execute" button: 
In the following screen we can simply accept the defaults ... 
... and press the "Execute" button again: 
Now some airline / airfare data is displayed in an SAP List Viewer grid: 
We can call the export feature simply by clicking the "Export" button from the toolbar right above the grid: 
Clicking the button brings up a dropdown menu from which we select the top item, i.e. the one called "Spreadsheet": 
In the dialog that pops up next, we select the middle option for the creating an OpenOffice.org / ODF spreadsheet file: 
Now we have to select a directory and file name for the to-be-exported ODF spreadsheet file: 
Once we have clicked the "Save" button, OpenOffice.org gets started and the SAP List Viewer data shows up in the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet application Calc. Since the application gets started via the mimetype assocation, this export feature should also work with any other application supporting ODF including KOffice or IBM Lotus Symphony. BTW, the ODF export feature of the SAP List Viewer component includes support for sub-totals and totals. 
In cases where the SAP List Viewer component contains address information, it's also easily possible to create form letters from the exported data. In order to do so, one simply has to create a new text document in OpenOffice.org and call the built-in Mail Merge Wizard: 
In step 3 of the OpenOffice.org Mail Merge Wizard, ... 
... one simply has to click on the "Select Different Address List..." button ... 
... to add a new address list file by clicking "Add..." ... ![image]()
... and selecting the ODF spreadsheet file that we created earlier: 
After the ABAP Editor has been started via the transaction SE38, we enter the report name "BCALV_TEST_GRID" ... ... and click the "Execute" button: In the following screen we can simply accept the defaults ... ... and press the "Execute" button again: Now some airline / airfare data is displayed in an SAP List Viewer grid: We can call the export feature simply by clicking the "Export" button from the toolbar right above the grid: Clicking the button brings up a dropdown menu from which we select the top item, i.e. the one called "Spreadsheet": In the dialog that pops up next, we select the middle option for the creating an OpenOffice.org / ODF spreadsheet file: Now we have to select a directory and file name for the to-be-exported ODF spreadsheet file: Once we have clicked the "Save" button, OpenOffice.org gets started and the SAP List Viewer data shows up in the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet application Calc. Since the application gets started via the mimetype assocation, this export feature should also work with any other application supporting ODF including KOffice or IBM Lotus Symphony. BTW, the ODF export feature of the SAP List Viewer component includes support for sub-totals and totals. In cases where the SAP List Viewer component contains address information, it's also easily possible to create form letters from the exported data. In order to do so, one simply has to create a new text document in OpenOffice.org and call the built-in Mail Merge Wizard: In step 3 of the OpenOffice.org Mail Merge Wizard, ... ... one simply has to click on the "Select Different Address List..." button ... ... to add a new address list file by clicking "Add..." ...
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