Adding text and data to a document: Text fields

Text is displayed in documents using text fields. All of the text (such as employee names, numbers, the words "Employee" and "Revenue", page numbers, and so on) in the following document are displayed in text fields:

A text field is the type of document control that displays data and text. Text fields can display metrics, attributes, consolidations, and custom groups from a dataset. They can also display page numbers or descriptive labels, such as the words "Employee" and "Region" in the sample above.

The different types of text fields include:

• Static text: This text does not change and is commonly used for labels or descriptions. Examples in the sample above are the words "Employee" and "Revenue". For steps to add static text, see To add a text field to a document.

• Dynamic text: This text is automatically populated by the document or dataset. Dynamic text is always included within braces { }. There are two types of dynamic text:

  • Data field: This is automatically populated from a dataset with data that originated in the data warehouse (or an Intelligence Server cache), such as the employee names and revenue amounts in the document sample above. A data field is a reference to an object on a report. The object can be a metric, attribute, consolidation, or custom group. For an example and steps, see Adding dynamic data to a document.

  • Auto text code: This is automatically populated by the document or dataset. It consists of the document's or dataset's settings rather than data from the data warehouse. For example, auto text codes can display the document's name and page numbers, and the dataset's name and filter information. In the document sample above, auto text codes display the page numbers. For the full list of available codes, as well as steps to create auto text codes, see Displaying document and dataset information: Auto text codes.

• A combination of any or all of the types: You can use a combination of different types of text fields in a single text field. For example, the text "Central Region" in the sample document above contains the dataset object Region, followed by the static text "Region". For an example and steps, see Combining different types of text fields in a document.

You can edit the text within any text field in a document. For steps, see Editing the text in a text field.