Filament's export action is great. It's quick to set up, supports queued exports, includes column mapping, handles notifications, and keeps a history of generated files through the Export model. For most use cases, it's exactly what you need.
But I recently ran into a limitation that the native export couldn't solve.
When XLSX isn't really Excel
I was exporting financial data or measurements from a Filament table. The export worked. The file downloaded. Excel opened it without any issue.
The problem was that every amount was exported as text instead of a real numeric value.
For an accountant, that creates several problems immediately:
- Excel formulas such as
=SUM()don't work correctly - Selecting a range of cells doesn't display totals in Excel's status bar
- Conditional formatting based on numeric values becomes unreliable
- Additional manual cleanup is required before the file can be used
Technically the export contained the data. Practically, it wasn't usable.
The root cause is simple: Filament's export system is designed around CSV-style exports. That's perfect for many scenarios, but it doesn't expose the full spreadsheet capabilities offered by PhpSpreadsheet and Laravel Excel.
On top of that, I also had a second, completely different requirement: a yearly report with one worksheet per month, merged headers, borders, conditional formatting, and custom layouts. Not a table dump but a report.
Why not just use Laravel Excel directly?
Laravel Excel already solves all of these problems. It's built on PhpSpreadsheet and provides complete control over cell types, number formats, formulas, styling, and multiple worksheets.
The obvious solution would have been to abandon Filament's export action entirely and build custom exports from scratch. But that means losing everything Filament already provides:
- Export modal and options form
- Column mapping UI
- Queue handling
- Progress notifications
- Download links
-
Exportmodel history
I didn't want to rebuild all of that. I simply wanted a different file generator underneath.
The full article is available on Filament Mastery for free members - create a free account to access the complete code.
