TF208071 Object reference Error from Excel with TFS reports

Question

VS2017, Click "Create Report in Microsoft Excel", Excel 2016 opens, once I click Finish, throws this "TF208071: The following error occurred when the command was generating PivotTable and PivotChart reports. Close the Microsoft Excel workbook and try again, or press F1 for more information. Object reference not set to an instance of an object. " Recently upgraded TFS server to 2017, I can still generate the reports using Visual Studio 2012/2013 by connecting to the same TFS server. However not on VS2017.

Where do I start looking? None of the event logs show any such error. I have 4 columns of data from the WI to export, so its not the amount of data.

Answer 1

Seems you are talking about create Excel reports from a work item query , try to clear TFS and VS cache and test again.

Besides, since you are using TFS2017 and VS2017, you could try to use this extension-- VSTS Open in Excel , you could use this extension for bulk editing work items, or to leverage Excel tools to analyze and visualize a large number of work items. You could directly open work items in web portal.

Besides, as a workaround, you could still generate the reports using Visual Studio 2012/2013 by connecting to the same TFS server.

Answer 2

Hope it helps someone! The issue is with the 2017 TFS COM Add-in, this has an issue used with Excel 2016. seems like a bug from Microsoft!

So we removed all the TFS addin from Excel2016. Then do a repair install of 2015 Office integration which will set V14 Com Add-in to load at start. Then it will export through VS2017 (using the 2015 COM IN)

You can also edit this through regedit, make the V14 OR V13 COM Add-in to load at startup by editing that specific TFS Addin to a value of 3 and setting all the rest to 0.