Business Central 2025 wave 1 (BC26): Use new properties on a report layout (ObsoleteState and ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets)

Hi, Readers.
The public preview for Dynamics 365 Business Central 2025 release wave 1 (BC26) is available. Learn more: Link.

I will continue to test and share some new features that I hope will be helpful.

Use new properties on a report layout:

Business value:
The new properties added to report layouts significantly enhance the flexibility and functionality of your reporting. The ObsoleteState property allows developers to mark layouts as deprecated, ensuring a smoother transition and better management of future updates. Meanwhile, the ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets property enables more complex and customized Excel reports without compromising existing layouts. These enhancements streamline your reporting processes, reduce the risk of errors, and ultimately save time and resources for your business.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/release-plan/2025wave1/smb/dynamics365-business-central/use-new-properties-report-layout?wt.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004336

This is also mentioned in AL Language extension changelog Version 15.0:

Added the ObsoleteState, ObsoleteReason, and ObsoleteTag properties to the Report Layout to enable marking a layout as obsolete.
Added the ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets property to the Report Layout to specify whether an Excel layout should be rendered with multiple data sheets or a single one.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-dynamics-smb.al/changelog

With this wave (BC26), the following new properties are available for report layouts:

• ObsoleteState
• ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets

With the ObsoleteState property, a developer can signal that a layout is deprecated and will be removed in a later release.
ObsoleteState Property: Marks whether the object will be deprecated.
ObsoleteReason Property: Specifies why the object has been marked as Pending in the ObsoleteState property.
ObsoleteTag Property: Specifies a free-form text to support tracking of where and when the object was marked as obsolete, for example, branch, build, or date of obsoleting the object.
For example,

The property is shown on the Report Layouts page.

PS: Business Central 2022 wave 1 (BC20): Adding multiple layouts (New rendering section for report and report extensions)

With the ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets property, a developer can override the global property defined on the report object to the layout context. For reports where the global property ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets wasn’t set (and therefore interpreted as False), a developer can add Excel layouts that use the ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets feature without adding the risk of breaking existing Excel layouts that users added.

In Business Central 2023 wave 2 (BC23): Sets whether an Excel layout will render to multiple data sheets or in a single sheet named Data (ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets Property), we have discussed this new property before, but at that time it could only be set globally for the report object. For example,

With this wave, we can set this property for layouts individually.

PS:

The Property ‘ExcelLayoutMultipleDataSheets’ can only be used if the property ‘Type’ is set to ‘Excel’ AL AL0223

Great, give it a try!!!😁

Update: Business Central 2025 wave 1 (BC26): Mark a user-defined layout as obsolete on the Report Layouts page

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU