Power Bi Report Builder- How to preserve formatting on matrix table when exported to excel

[janani80]

Hi All,

I am working on Power BI report builder and have created a matrix table which has merged columns and merged cells. I have selected the font settings for all the columns as Arial, Bold and size as 10. When I export the matrix table in excel the font settings are not getting reflected on columns/cells which are merged. Can someone help me with fixing this issue.

[v-sgandrathi]

Hi @janani80,

Thank you @tayloramy for your contribution to the community.

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[tayloramy · Accepted solution]

Hi @janani80,

This happens because the Excel renderer for paginated reports prioritizes layout fidelity over cell-by-cell styling. When a textbox spans multiple columns/rows (or report items don’t line up perfectly), the renderer creates merged cells in Excel to mimic the visual layout. Excel then applies the formatting from the top-left cell of each merged range, which can make your Arial/Bold/10 settings appear to “drop” on the rest of the merged cells. Microsoft also documents some quirks with merged cells and rounding that can cause unexpected behavior on export. See “Text boxes and text,” “Merged cells,” and alignment/rounding guidance in the official docs: Export to Excel (Report Builder).

Some things to try

1. Minimize merged cells in the layout. Make sure the left/right edges of all items align and widths match exactly; use whole-point sizes (e.g., 72pt = 1in) to avoid rounding merges (why this matters).
2. Turn off growth on headers that span columns: set CanGrow = False so rows don’t expand and force new merges (tip).
3. Explicitly style the top-left cell of any area that will export as merged; Excel adopts that cell’s font for the whole merged block (supported font behaviors).
4. Provide an “Excel-friendly” layout: duplicate your matrix (or create a simplified header) and show it only when exporting to Excel, hiding the fancy merged-header version. Use visibility expressions with the built-in render format:
   

   =IIF(Globals!RenderFormat.Name = "EXCELOPENXML", true, false)

   Docs: Built-in Globals

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