IBM Cognos Report Studio: Select Style Variable for Multiple Crosstab Intersections

Question

This is a rather "workflow-oriented" question:

When I try to select multiple crosstab intersections in my report, the "Style Variable" property disappears under the Conditional section in the Properties window. Hence, I am not able to set the style variable for more than one intersection (i.e. element) at a time.

When selecting ancestors (e.g. 'Crosstab Fact Cells') with the "up arrow", one can set the style variable for multiple elements. However, if one of the elements in any of these selections are *de*selected, and the selection no longer corresponds to one of those predefined sets of ancestors ('Crosstab Fact Cells', 'Crosstab Columns', etc.), the Style Variable property is hidden. Unfortunately, none of these predefined selections are appropriate for my case.

I have about 150 intersections in my crosstab, and it is therefore not an option to use style variables if I have to set the variable for each individual element. However, if someone knows of a way to set this property for multiple intersections simultaneously, that would have been great.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Answer 1

This is unfortunately not a solution for selecting Style Variables for multiple crosstab intersections at the same time.

However, this is how I worked around the problem. I wanted to hide certain rows depending on some parameter value specifying the detail level of the report.

This could be accomplished by using boolean expressions in "Conditional Styles" instead. One of the conditional styles expressions could be string2int64(ParamDisplayValue('pDetailLevel'))>=1

This solution actually turned out be more robust and flexible than using style variables, and you can choose your selection of elements randomly.