Exporting Custom Column

Updated on Jul 17, 2026

As of R1 2018 the GetCellContent method is no longer used for exporting a custom column content. Instead, the GetExportCellContent one of GridViewBoundColumnBase needs to be overriden. Check Example 2.

In order to automatically export a custom column, without handling some of the exporting events, it should implement the IExportableColumn interface. The interface exposes the following methods and properties:

• GetCellContent: Gets the content of the cell. You can override it to return custom value.
• DataFormatString: Gets or sets the string format applied to the column.
• ExportedElementWidth: Gets the actual width of the column.

The GridViewBoundColumnBase class implements the interface so you can directly override the method.

[C#]Example 1: Overriden GetCellContent method

C#

 	protected override object GetCellContent(object item)
	{
		var columnProperty = item.GetType().GetProperty(this.DataMemberBinding.Path.Path);
		return string.Format("@ {0} @", columnProperty.GetValue(item, null) as string);
	}

[C#]Example 2: Overriden GetExportCellContent method

C#

	protected override object GetExportCellContent(object item)
	{
		var columnProperty = item.GetType().GetProperty(this.DataMemberBinding.Path.Path);
		return string.Format("@ {0} @", columnProperty.GetValue(item, null) as string);
	}

The values from the exported column will appear in Excel as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Exported Custom Column to Excel

See Also

• Export Events
• Export to Excel
• Export to Pdf