Reusing styles from another report

You can apply local and global styles from one report in another report.

About this task

Local styling is kept when you reference styles from another report. However, you can remove some or all local styling from the target report.

If the referenced report is renamed or moved, IBM® Cognos® Business Intelligence automatically updates the reference information in the target report.

You can reference local classes only if local classes with the same name exist in the target report. You can reference styles from a report only if you have the permissions to access the report. If you referenced styles from a report and the permissions for the report are changed so that you can no longer access it, the referenced styles are still applied when the target report is run.

You cannot use a report that contains referenced styles as the source report for style references for other reports.

If the target report contains more than one page, the Preview pane in the Report Style References window shows how the referenced styles are applied in the report page that you are currently viewing.

Tip: You can see which global classes contain inherited styles when you click View > Classes. Global classes that reference styles from another report are identified by the referenced styles icon Inherited styles icon

. You can also modify classes that contain referenced styles. Such classes are identified by the modified referenced styles icon Icon identifying classes with inherited styles and user modifications

Procedure

From the Tools menu, click Style References.
Select the Apply style from report check box.
Click the ellipsis icon and open the report that contains the styles that you want to reuse.
To remove local styles in the report, in the Remove custom styles from the current report section, select the check boxes of the styles that you want to remove.
To specify when to refresh styles when styles in the referenced report are modified, in the Refresh report styles section, select one of the following options.
- To refresh styles automatically, click the Run time radio button.
- To control when styles are refreshed, click the Manually radio button.
  When this choice is selected, styles are refreshed only when you click the Refresh now icon.