Suppressing zero and empty cell values

A common feature of multidimensional databases is that they are "hypersparse". For many combinations of rows and columns, there is no data and reports can contain a large number of empty cells (represented, by default as #N/A) or zero values.

You can exclude from an Ad-hoc report, columns and rows which contain only zero values or columns and rows which contain no values.

Note: Suppressing zero columns and rows also suppresses empty columns and rows. But suppressing empty columns and rows does not suppress zero values.

When you use zero suppression, any column or row which contains only zero values is hidden. If the column or row contains at least one non-zero value, the zero values in that column/row are still shown.

You can suppress zero values by ensuring that they are not displayed in the report or by manually suppressing them when they are displayed.

Automatic suppression

To prevent zero values being displayed, open the Ad-hoc Report Designer (Ctrl + D). Click the heading of the Rows or Columns section and press <F4>. The Properties pane opens. There are two options; Empty Cell Suppression and Zero Suppression. (Under Infor BI Applications Relational Provider database aliases, only Zero Suppression is displayed).

Click Zero Suppression or Empty Cell Suppression and select True from the list.

Manual suppression

If suppression is False in Properties, zero and/or empty cells may be displayed. To suppress them, right-click the data area of the report and select Suppress Zero Rows and Zero Columns or Suppress Empty Rows and Columns.

Or, use the suppression options available from the Suppression button on the Ad-hoc report group on the ribbon.

SeeRibbon and groups.

Note: If you select Suppress Zero Rows and Zero Columns, suppression of empty rows and columns is automatically applied and the Suppress Empty Rows and Columns option is disabled.

But, selecting Suppress Empty Rows and Columns does not automatically apply zero suppression.

Under Infor CPM Relational Provider database aliases, empty cells cannot be suppressed.