Seems there has been a rash of reported problems with QuickBooks 2019 Users who indicate that they only get the option to 'Create a comma separate values (csv) file' when attempting to Send Report to Excel from QuickBooks. In other words, the options these users experience look more like those seen in the example on the right, then those on the left in the illustration below.
Excel Options Grayed Out
Intuit has a couple of 'QuickBooks Community' HELP articles, the first is titled 'Export option for Excel is grayed out' which tells you that your most likely reasons for this problem are:
- Excel is not installed on your computer.
- Excel is installed across a network.
- The local Excel installation is damaged.
This article also tells you that you should attempt to 'Toggle the User Account Control (UAC) in Windows' to resolve your problem(s) and it then takes you through those steps. Since they are likely 'not going to help you', I won't take the time to walk you through them. If you want to try them then go ahead and refer to the HELP Article which I have cited (URL included) above.
The next is the 'in product' HELP article titled 'Export option for Excel is grayed out (by QuickBooks help does not Not working on my case) which can also be accessed here with subsequent update(s). This article is somewhat more beneficial in that it suggests the problem(s) may be both QuickBooks and/or Excel and it recommends 'Un-installing and Re-installing' both and also 'Repairing' of both. It takes you through basic steps to do those, and it also provides links to other QuickBooks articles and even Microsoft support documents related thereto.
Lastly, that same 'chain' provides information about getting access to official QuickBooks (Desktop) support in the even that you can't resolve the problem, which unfortunately the individual posting in the first place did not.
You see the problem is not a bad installation of Excel, it's the wrong installation of Excel, and we have seen this is the past couple of versions of QuickBooks that supposedly supports the following Excel versions (based upon the System Requirements):
Microsoft Office:
- Office 2016 (including Outlook 2016) both on 32 and 64-bit
- Office 2010 and Office 2013 and 365 (including Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013) both on 32 and 64 bit Note: Office 365 is only supported when it is locally installed, not the web version.
- Exporting reports requires Microsoft Excel 2016, 2013, or 2010 or Office 365 (includes 64-bit)
We have found that many installations simply will not 'work' properly if a 64-bit version is installed, the result is almost always that the 'Export options for Excel will be grayed out' and the only option available to the user will be to 'Create a comma separate values (csv) file'.
This may not be true in all installations of QuickBooks 2019 (or even earlier versions specified as compatible with 64-bit versions), nor in all installations of Excel, nor even all installations of Excel (64-bit). But if you suddenly start seeing problems after changing your Excel installation (such as upgrading to a newer version), I would definitely recommend you consider this as one of the major potential causes. You probably will save yourself a major headache by simply uninstalling the 64-bit version and installing the 32-bit version before attempting any of the other 'mambo-jumbo' to make it work...which as the client in these 'HELP' articles found out the hard way, didn't help at all.