Exporting List View to Excel Includes Hidden Source Fields Used in Calculated Columns

Question

I have a custom SharePoint Online list with several calculated fields that use other fields for their calculations (e.g., the calculated field "Full Name" = [First Name] + [Last Name]). In my list views, only the calculated fields (e.g., "Full Name") are displayed, not the source fields (e.g., "First Name" and "Last Name"). However, when I export the list view to Excel, all the source fields used in the calculations are included in the export as empty columns, even though they are not displayed in the view. How can I prevent these unused source columns from appearing in the Excel export?

Answer 1

Dear Offirh,

Good day! Thank you for posting in our community. Your question is "Exporting List View to Excel Includes Hidden Source Fields Used in Calculated Columns".

As per your description, we did the test on our end and we could reproduce the issue as well.

We created "first name" "last name" and "full name"(calculated column) in the list.

And then we created a different view to hide "first name" and "last name". In this view, we clicked "export to excel" option.

When opening the file, it still shows those 2 columns at end.

Since issue can be reproduced, we believe this is the product design related. We are not able to directly change the behavior from user end. As a workaround, I found "export to csv" option is working as expected. Kindly check the exporting result below and consider using this option as replacement.

Thank you for your cooperation and have a nice day!

Best Regards,

Answer 2

Thank you so much Sophia! so if I understand correctly, you're saying this is a known limitation or a bug in SharePoint design? any plan to fix that in the future?

Thanks for the CSV workaround, I'm also aware of other workarounds (connecting from Excel to SPO using Excel Power Query), but I was looking for a way to fix the Excel export, as random end users will keep on using the Export to Excel option, so these workarounds will not fix it for them.

Answer 3

Dear Offirh,

Thank you for your feedback. It is hard to define it as a " known issue" or "bug" without confirmation from Microsoft backend team. What we can confirm is this should be the current "product design" even though it is much better and more logic if it can be changed, which I completely have same feeling as you.

In this case, I would suggest you to submit a ticket to Microsoft support, so they may report this issue to related team for you to see if it can be changed.

However, as I know, Microsoft do not make changes to the product design easily due to some considerations, for example, it might have more affects and might miss some different users' requirements, etc. If you can describe more impact to your whole tenant and the necessarity of changing this feature, it might get more chance to be changed. But, no promise can be made for that.

To submit a ticket, if you can tenant admin, you can sign in to Microsoft 365 admin center with your Microsoft 365 admin account, and select Support > Help and support, enter your question and select Contact support. Otherwise, please refer to How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin?

At last, if the information we provided give some direction for the issue, please vote, with your vote, other users who are facing same query can easily find this thread and check suggestion when they search on community. Your vote helps other user to resolve their queries.

Thank you for your cooperation and have a nice day!

Best Regards,