NAV AS 101 Lesson 14: Exporting to Excel

Using the Export to Excel function is the single most important time-saver when using NAV account schedules because once you create your first Excel workbook and set all the formatting you’ve created a “shell” that never needs to be set up or changed again. Each month, when you produce your reports for the next fiscal cycle, all you need to do is update that month’s numbers. Not only does this save you a huge amount of time, but your reports also look consistently the same month after month.

This post has video demonstrations showing three different ways to use the export to Excel function. The videos are all done using NAV 2009 R2 Classic, but the functions work exactly the same in all versions of NAV. The only thing that is different is how you get to the Export to Excel function in each version of the software.

NAV 2009 Classic – Choose Functions button at bottom right then choose Export to Excel

NAV2009 RTC – Choose Actions button at top left then choose Functions then choose Export to Excel

NAV2013 – On the Ribbon choose Export to Excel

Produce the same report for three different months

Produce the same report for three different dimensions

Produce financial statement package with three different reports, for two different months

Correction: Oh no! In NAV2013, we’ve lost the ability to update the workbook and still retain formatting. See my post on Account Schedule bugs here for more details on the new recommended best practice on how to deal with this change. I’ll get a new video posted out here with a demo of how to do this later this year.

This posting is part of the NAV Account Schedules 101 series.  Find the entire list of lessons here.

Don’t forget to visit the Account Schedule Formulas and Account Schedule Examples pages if you’re looking for even more ideas on how to improve your financial reporting using account schedules with Microsoft Dynamics NAV.