Forum Discussion

Eve_Pereira's avatar
Eve_Pereira
New Contributor II
22 hours ago

Looking for Input: XFGetCell vs. Cube Views in Excel

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to get some input from the community on Excel-based reporting in OneStream.

In your experience, which format has proven to be more efficient and reliable: XFGetCell formulas or Cube View connections?

The reason I’m asking is that we use OneStream reports to feed data into Excel workbooks, and we’re getting recurring feedback from users about performance issues—slow refresh times and, in some cases, Excel crashing.

For context, these workbooks usually contain multiple tabs and often include a mix of:

  • Cube View connections
  • Quick Views
  • XFGetCell formulas (used when a specific layout is required)

Our goal is to better advise users on the best reporting approach. So far, it feels like this mixed setup is becoming heavy and is negatively impacting the user experience.

If you have any best practices, lessons learned, or tips on what works best (and what to avoid), I’d really appreciate you sharing them.

Thanks so much in advance!

Eve

Cube View
Excel Add In
Reports

2 Replies

  • MarcusH's avatar
    MarcusH
    Valued Contributor
    9 hours ago

    We have found that Cube Views and Table Views work really well if there are not too many of them in a workbook. I can't define 'too many' accurately but certainly we had a workbook with over 75 Cube Views which causes a lot of problems. You don't say which version you are on - the later versions (9+) have improved performance for embedded objects in Excel. We looked at using Books - the performance is really good but the format is poor. We wanted more than 1 Cube Views on a single sheet and this is not possible in Books. In summary, we are still using Cube Views as they are easier to manage and update but we have split the workbook into smaller pieces for performance and reliability reasons.

    • Eve_Pereira's avatar
      Eve_Pereira
      New Contributor II
      3 hours ago

      Hi Marcus, thanks so much for sharing this — super helpful insight.

      That aligns with what we’re seeing as well. Our issues seem to show up mainly when workbooks grow large and complex, with many embedded objects across multiple tabs. Good call on splitting workbooks into smaller pieces for performance and reliability — that’s something we’re starting to consider more seriously.

      We’re currently on version 9+, so it’s good to know performance improvements are there, but design still plays a big role. Also appreciate the perspective on Books — great performance, but the formatting and layout limitations make them harder to use for our needs.

      Really helpful context, thank you again for taking the time to respond!