Formatting sections using the Property List

The Property List is the most convenient way to format sections, as it contains all the options of the other interfaces, and it appears on the same screen as the Layout area. You can select the background fill for the section, including gradient colors (two-color combinations). Other properties include those that define the size of the section, and how and whether it is displayed. These properties are described in more detail in Working with sections in documents; a brief overview is provided in the following procedure.

To format a section

1. Open the document to be formatted. (How?)

2. If the Property List is not displayed, select Property List from the View menu.

3. Select the section to format from the drop-down list at the top of the Property List.

4. To change the background color, select a new Backcolor using the Color dialog box.

5. Change the Backstyle property to specify whether the background is:

   • Transparent, which allows you to see what is behind the section.

   • Opaque, which covers what is behind the section. It also allows the fill color of the section to be seen.

   • Gradient, which blends from one color to another. For more information, see Steps to apply gradient colors.

6. To apply gradient colors, which blend two colors to create a gradual color change in the background, see Steps to apply gradient colors.

   For a comparison of the following properties, see Hiding and displaying sections.

7. To display the section even if it has no content, set Hide if empty to False. By default, it is set to True. This setting is not affected by the Can Shrink property.

8. To hide the section when a user views the document, set Visible to False. The section is still visible in Design View in MicroStrategy Developer and Design Mode in MicroStrategy Web.

9. To hide the section when a user views the document in display modes in MicroStrategy Web, set Visible in Web View mode to False. By default, the section is displayed.

   The Visible in Web View mode property is available only for the Document Header/Footer, Layout Header/Footer, and Page Header/Footer sections.

   By default, the height of all rows is the same in a document exported to Excel. This conserves the same layout that you created in the document. However, a Grid/Graph can contain data that is too long to fit inside an Excel cell and is therefore cut off. You can allow Excel to dynamically and automatically resize the row heights in a specific document section so that the rows are tall enough to display the full text. For more details, see Allowing Excel to automatically change row height. For instructions on exporting documents to Excel, see Exporting documents to Excel.

10. To allow Excel to automatically resize the row heights, set Automatically fit rows to True.

    The page break properties are not available for the Page Header/Footer sections.

11. To specify whether and how a page break is inserted, select one of the following options in the Force new page property:

    • None: no page break is inserted; the default.

    • Before section: the current section is always printed at the top of a new page.

    • After section: the section immediately following the current section is printed at the top of a new page.

    • Before and after section: the current section is printed at the top of a new page, and the next section is printed at the top of a new page.

    • For an example, see Adding page breaks to documents.

12. To specify whether a page break is allowed within the section, set the Keep together property:

    • By default, this property is False, meaning that as much of the section as possible is printed on the current page, with the remainder on the following pages.

    • If the property is set to True and the entire section does not fit on the page, then the section starts on the top of the next page and continues on subsequent pages.

    • For an example, see Keeping the contents of a section together.

13. To specify whether the entire contents of the selected section are repeated on the next horizontal page when a section spans multiple pages, change Repeat horizontally to True. For an example, see Repeating information horizontally.

14. To specify whether the entire contents of the section are repeated at the top of the next page/column when the section spans multiple pages, change Repeat on each page to True. For an example, see Repeating a group header on another page.

    The Repeat on each page property is available only for header sections.

Related Topics

• Working with sections in documents

• Inserting additional sections into documents