Working with data formatting types

The data formatting options in Office Plus are No formatting, Use client formatting and Use provider formatting.

To select a formatting type:

1. Open an Ad-hoc report.
2. Click a blank area of an Ad-hoc report.
3. Press F4.

   The Properties pane is displayed.

   No formatting

   With No Formatting, database values are transferred to Office Plus as numbers. Any formatting which has been specified on the server is ignored. No Formatting increases the transfer speed.

   Use client formatting

   With client formatting, only values and their data types are retrieved from the server. They are formatted according to a template or, if no template is applied, according to the default Microsoft Excel formatting. Formatting specified in the Exception Reporting dialog is also applied. If the data contains formatting information, this overrides the formatting specified in a template.

   If the data contains named formats, Office Plus displays them according to the definition in the template. If, for example, the values of a dimension have the name ‘currency’, they are displayed according to the ‘currency’ style.

   If the provider data does not contain formatting, cell values are formatted with the definitions in the data area style of the template. If no template is assigned to the report, the data is displayed with Excel’s default style.

   Use provider formatting

   Provider formatting corresponds to Server formatting. Database values are transferred to Office Plus as formatted text. They are displayed with the server formatting. Because the values are transferred as text, they cannot be used in Excel formulas. You cannot use charts with provider formatting.

   Note: Using Provider Formatting increases the transfer speed.

4. Select Formatting Type and select a type from the list.