Ideas for formatting

Formatting can be as fine-grained as you choose and as your needs require. Steps for all of the ideas below are in this chapter.

• Individual cells in grid reports: Format individual cells of data in a grid report when a single data value is important to call attention to or you want it to be easy and quick to locate in a large report. Use thresholds to have values formatted automatically. You can also determine a value to display, such as the word EMPTY, when a cell would otherwise appear empty.
• Rows and columns in grid reports: You can hide a metric column on a report so that it does not display when the report is executed again. You can also apply bands of color to groups of report rows or columns, to make large quantities of data easier to analyze. You can rename row and column headers so the object names are more meaningful to yourself or other analysts. You can also manually make columns narrower or wider, or adjust row height, to fine-tune your report display.
• Graph reports: You can select an appropriate style for your graph (pie, bar, line, 3D Surface, Gantt, and so on) and format the colors of series (for example, the colors of pie slices in a pie graph). You can also reposition and resize elements such as the graph legend, titles, and axis labels.
• Autostyles: MicroStrategy comes with several presentation styles for displaying reports, called autostyles. Each autostyle automatically applies a set of formatting that includes color scheme, font style, and font type to a report. Autostyles let you standardize formatting across many reports.