Too Many Columns in QuickBooks Report

By chance do you have more than 256 jobs? If you do and if I make the assumption that the error message is coming from QuickBooks and not Excel, I'd bet this is something of a known issue.

Because Excel 2003 and before had a limit of 256 columns, that is what Intuit has programed to. While they realize that Excel 2007 allows for more, they have not changed the programing.

I would look at different ways to break down the report into smaller groupings. Maybe only select half of your jobs?? If you have Excel 2007 you could then combine them all into one after the fact.

Sorry, that's about all I've got.

Thanks for your response.

You are correct; it is a problem with Excel and not Quickbooks. The problem is that I don't really need all the columns that the Quickbooks report produces. Each job produces two (2) columns and puts me above the 256 columns. However, I don't know how to modify the Quickbooks report, before the export.

I don't know that there is a way to stop the report from creating the 2 columns for each job. So I'd do two reports, each with half the customer:jobs. (Of course I'd guess at half because I'm sure not going to count.)

To modify the report to give you only certain customer:jobs, click on the Modify Report button in the upper left corner of the report.

From there, click on the Filters Tab. There is a little box Labeled Filter on the left. Find 'Name' and click on that.

Next to the box, a drop down with 'All Names' should be there. Click on the drop down arrow and select 'Multiple Names'

This will bring up another window with all the customer:job names. You need to place a check in front of those you want to run on the report. (HINT: Click on the first name and keep the mouse button down. Then just scroll down the list and the check marks will follow.)

Once you get about half of your list selected, stop and press OK. Make sure to note who you stopped with so you can pick up there on the next report.

You can either memorize this report, or simply recreate it every time you need it. If you customer list changes often, it may be best just to re-create.

After exporting the report, go back to the Filters tab. On the right side there is a box of 'Current Filter Names.' You should see Filter Name - Set to Multiple names...
Click on that then click Remove Selected Filter. You are now back to the original report. Still in the Filters tab, click on the the 'Name' filter on the left again and select multiple names. This time, scroll down to where you ended the first time and select the rest of your customers:jobs.

What is in the two columns?

Thanks for the solution.

One column is revenues the other is expenses.

Stacy

Your suggestion really worked well. I understand this method.

I have a follow-up question. I ran into another problem in the same area. When I ran the report for all names I got a correct report. However, when I tried to split into three groups, in order to export to Excel, one job did not show up under the multiple names. Accordingly, I am missing one job, when I split into three groups. Any ideas?

Thanks
IJ

IJ

I'm glad the suggestion worked for you.

As for the one job not showing up, not sure why that would be. Can you select just that job and have it appear in a report? (The quick answer would be to just add it in that way. Of course that doesn't fix the issue.)

The first thing I would do is re-sort my Customer list. (Right click on any customer/job and click Re-sort List) You can re-sort the rest of them as well, but 'they' say that isn't needed any more. If the job still isn't showing, I'd run a verify on the file.

My thinking is that there would have to be some sort of damage for it to show up one way but not another. Let us know if this works.