Say you're perusing a few reports you haven't seen since the dawn of your SF Org, thanks to the new Winter '12 report folder interface, and you come across an oldie but a goodie summary report.
"Awesome," you think as you quickly click on the "Export Details" button to work some Excel magic and show off your report's findings. Wait a second, that once dusty report's Excel file equivalent looks nothing like what you saw in your browser window. What's going on here?
The "Export Details" button does exactly that... it exports the details of the report; meaning every line that makes up your report will be rendered as a new line in your .xls or .csv. This is regardless of whether or not you have clicked on the "Show Details" or "Hide Details" button. Of course, you could rework the resulting spreadsheet and do the grouping yourself, but why would you do that?
Rather than eagerly clicking on the "Export Details button," take the "Printable View" button for a test drive. It will render your report again as an .xls file, but retain the grouping as you see it on your report.
If you want to see the details, click on the "Show Details" button prior to clicking on the "Printable View" button. This will show each line item as well as the summarized headers. If you don't want details, make sure that you've clicked on the "Hide Details" button.
In case you were wondering, this also works for Matrix reports!
