I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately for help with exporting a report to a file in SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS). The focus of this tutorial will be to show you guys how you can export a report from your Report Server.

Please note, this tutorial will not show you how to export an RDLC (client-side) report.

The first thing we need to do is setup up our Visual Studio .NET project:

1. Download ReportHelper zip and extract the wrapper C# class ReportHelper.cs into your project.
2. You will need to add a service reference to your Report Server execution web service (e.g. http://YourServerName/ReportServer/ReportExecution2005.asmx).
3. Alternatively, you can use the VS.NET WSDL tool to extract a C# proxy class and add that to your project (I’ll provide instructions on how to do this further down).

Once you’re all setup, create a new VS.NET MVC or Web Forms project.

MVC:  Create the following action method in your HomeController:

public FileContentResult ExportReport()
{

var @params = new List<ReportingServices.ParameterValue>();
@params.Add(new ReportingServices.ParameterValue() { Name = “ParameterName”, Value = “YourValue”});

var report = new NunoSolutions.Report();
report.ReportServerUrl = “http://YourServer/ReportServer”;
report.ReportPath = “/Home/Report1”; // This is the report server path to your report
report.ExportParameters = @params.ToArray(); // can be excluded if your report doesn’t have parameters
report.ReportTitle = “Your Report Name”;
report.ReportFormat = “Excel”;
return NunoSolutions.ReportHelper.ExportMVC(report);

}

WebForms:  Create new button called “Button1” and connect the “Click” event to the following method:

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

var @params = new List<ReportingServices.ParameterValue>();
@params.Add(new ReportingServices.ParameterValue() { Name = “ParameterName”, Value = “YourValue”});

var report = new NunoSolutions.Report();
report.ReportServerUrl = “http://YourServer/ReportServer”;
report.ReportPath = “/Home/Report1”; // This is the report server path to your report
report.ExportParameters = @params.ToArray(); // can be excluded if your report doesn’t have parameters
report.ReportTitle = “Your Report Name”;
report.ReportFormat = “Excel”;
NunoSolutions.ReportHelper.Export(report);

}

You’re done, go ahead and run your project. If you configured everything correctly, your report should get exported to Excel format.

Here’s how you can generate the SSRS proxy class:

1. Open VS.NET Command Prompt
2. Enter CD  C:\Temp  and press enter (this will be the location where the proxy file will be created)
3. Execute the following command to generate the SSRS proxy class (make sure you change the report server name to your server’s name): wsdl /out:ReportExecutionService.cs http://YourReportServerName/ReportServer/ReportExecution2005.asmx?WSDL
4. In Visual Studio, add C:\Temp\ReportExecutionService.cs file to your project

Click Here for more information on how to export a C# Proxy class using Microsoft’s WSDL utility.