Book Image

IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook

By : Abhishek Sanghani
Book Image

IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook

By: Abhishek Sanghani

Overview of this book

Cognos Report Studio is widely used for creating and managing business reports in medium to large companies. It is simple enough for any business analyst, power user, or developer to pick up and start developing basic reports. However, when it comes to developing more sophisticated, fully functional business reports for wider audiences, report authors will need guidance. This book helps you understand and use all the features provided by Report Studio to generate impressive deliverables. It will take you from being a beginner to a professional report author. It bridges the gap between basic training provided by manuals or trainers and the practical techniques learned over years of practice. This book covers all the basic and advanced features of Report Authoring. It begins by bringing readers on the same platform and introducing the fundamental features useful across any level of reporting. Then it ascends to advanced techniques and tricks to overcome Studio limitations.Develop excellent reports using dimensional data sources by following best practices that development work requires in Report Studio. You will also learn about editing the report outside the Studio by directly editing the XML specifications. Provide richness to the user interface by adding JavaScript and HTML tags. The main focus is on the practical use of various powerful features that Report Studio has to offer to suit your business requirements.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Merged cells in Excel output


There is a list report with many columns. The report shows the title in page header. Users mostly access this report in Excel format.

When the output is generated, Cognos puts the output in the first cell (A1). This stretches the A column.

In this recipe, we will see how to get Cognos to generate merged cells so that the columns are not stretched.

Getting ready

Create a simple list report. Put a report title in the page header.

How to do it...

  1. Insert a Table from the 'Insertable objects' pane into the report header.

  2. Set the Number of columns to 4. Keep Number of rows at 1. Hit OK.

  3. Now select the first cell of the table. Hold down Shift key and select the last cell of the table. This should select all the cells.

  4. From the menu, select Table | Merge Cells. This will merge four cells into one.

  5. Now unlock the report objects. Select the report title and drag it inside the table.

  6. Change the text font and size appropriately.

  7. Run the report in Excel to test it. As you can see in...