coldfusion cfreport error when format is excel

Question

I have a problem when using cfreport with format is excel. This error occur even the *.cfr file contain only single Label.

<cferror template="path/to/error_template.cfm" type="EXCEPTION">

<cfreport template="path/to/cfr_file.cfr" format="excel">
    <cfreportparam name="param1" value="value1">
    <!--- several cfreportparam tag --->
</cfreport>

from the custom error template,

• Diagnostic : (class: net/sf/jasperreports/engine/export/JRXlsExporter, method: createMergeRegion signature: (Lnet/sf/jasperreports/engine/export/JRExporterGridCell;IILorg/apache/poi/hssf/usermodel/HSSFCellStyle;)V) Incompatible argument to function null
  The error occurred on line -1.
• Message : (class: net/sf/jasperreports/engine/export/JRXlsExporter, method: createMergeRegion signature: (Lnet/sf/jasperreports/engine/export/JRExporterGridCell;IILorg/apache/poi/hssf/usermodel/HSSFCellStyle;)V) Incompatible argument to function

This error only occur only when format is excel.

Thank you :)

Answer 1

Looking at the diagnostic message, it seems that CF is calling Jasper Reports to generate your report, and that's internally calling Apache POI. However, CF is hitting an issue with finding the right Java method to call.

It's possible that this is a bug in the cfreport tag, but the most likely reason for an exception like this is when you have multiple copies of the Jasper Reports or POI jars in your ColdFusion classpath. What then happens is that CF picks the wrong Jar, tries to call a new/old method on the old/new jar, and fails. I suggest you check your classpath and either ensure you only have the latest jars there, or only the ones that CF ships, but not two copies as I suspect you currently have.

See this for an example of how to get the jar file that CF loaded a java class from