Link: http://myxcelsius.com/2009/07/06/customize-your-xcelsius-dashboard-with-the-export2excel-solution-from-clearpeaks/

If you like to export you Xcelsius data to Excel from a runtime dashboard there is a great add-on for the Tomcat application server provied by ClearPeaks www.clearpeaks.com.
This solution named Export2Excel is free and can be downloaded here.

The configuration is quite easy.

1. Download the WAR file
2. Copy the ExportToExcelv2.war into your Tomcat webapps folder
3. Restart Tomcat application server
4. Run Xcelsius
5. Open Data Manager
6. Add XML connection
7. Set the XML Data-URL to http://servername:port/ExportToExcelv2/index.jsp
8. Configure the “Enable Send” funcion, which contains the dataset you like to export to Excel.
9. Be sure that you type URLDummy as the Name of the "Enable Load", and that the Range contains just one cell. This cell is the URL of the exported Excel file.
10. Now you can implement a button to your dashboard, which exports the configured dataset to excel.
11. Last but not least you may add a button to call the URL, where the exported excel file resists.

There is also something similar from Centigon Solutions Inc. called Xport Wizard, which handles more output formats, but is not for free: http://www.centigonsolutions.com/xportwizard/index.html

Maloy Manna a.k.a. biguru has also described on his Blog, how to implement this method on a .NET application server:
http://biguru.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/export-data-out-of-your-xcelsius-dashboards/

Have fun...

Read more about this astounding study of Ray Panko from the University of Hawai'i. What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors

As Excel Spreadsheets are like data silos, they are not secured and mostly inexplicable, they are indeed not the state of the art tools for business intelligence.

Xcelsius borrows the Excel functionality as a designing and calcuation engine for it's comprehensive dashbording solutions. So Xcelsius Dashboards are often to be understood as "Spreadsheets 2.0".

Hopefully the study of Mr. Panko cannot be transferred to Xcelsius Dashboards. Serious errors in Management Dashboards could cause unpleasant effects on business. If you are interested in a nice Excel anecdote take a look at Lehman Excel snafu could cost Barclays dear.

Remember: Comments in Xcelsius Models for documentation purposes are valuable metadata and as important as they are in traditional software development.

There a several ways to address a column in Excel. You could use the offset function, BUT it is NOT SUPPORTED in Xcelsius 2008. You can also implement an offset counter which helps you addressing the correct column in your formulas.

Allright, nice workaround. But here is my best practice hint:
Excel operates in 2 modes. You can use characters for representing columns, which is the standard behaviour in Excel.
But you can also switch to R1C1-Mode, which means that your rows and your columns are addressed via figures. And this also works in Xcelsius and makes life much easier!

This is the default behaviour of column addressing in Excel:

Now, go to the options and switch on R1C1 mode.

Voila, here we go with a mode which enables us creating Dashboards much faster, without thinking of offsets.