Understanding Style Templates

A style template is an RTF template that contains style information that can be applied to RTF layouts.

The style information in the style template is applied to RTF layouts at runtime to achieve a consistent look and feel across your enterprise reports. You associate a style template to a report layout in the report definition. Using a style template has the following benefits:

  • Enables the same look and feel across your enterprise reports

  • Enables same header and footer content, such as company logos, headings, and page numbering

  • Simplifies changing the elements and styles across all reports

About Styles Defined in the Style Template

Use style template to define paragraph and heading styles, table styles, and header and footer content.

The styles of the following elements can be defined in the style template:

  • Paragraph and Heading Styles

    You can create a paragraph style in a style template. When this same named style is used in a report layout, the report layout inherits the following from the style template definition: font family, font size, font weight (normal, bold), font style (normal, italic), font color, and text decoration (underline, overline, or strike through).

  • Table Styles

    Following are some of the style elements inherited from the table style definition: font style, border style, gridline definition, shading, and text alignment.

  • Header and Footer Content

    The header and footer regions of the style template are applied to the report layout. This includes images, dates, page numbers, and any other text-based content. If the report layout also includes header and footer content, then it is overwritten.

Style Template Process

Following this process for creating style templates helps ensure consistency across documents.

Design Time

For the Style Template:

  1. Open Microsoft Word.

  2. Define named styles for paragraphs, tables, headings, and static header and footer content. This is the style template.

  3. Save this document as a .rtf file.

  4. To ensure that you do not lose custom styles in Microsoft Word, also save the document as a Word Template file (.dot) or save the styles to the Normal.dot file. This file can be shared with other report designers.

  5. Upload the RTF style template file to the catalog.

For the layout template using the style template:

  1. In the RTF template, use the same named styles for paragraph and table elements that you want to be inherited from the style template.
  2. Open the report in BI Publisher's Report Editor and select the style template to associate to the report. Then enable the style template for the specific report layout.

Runtime

When you run the report with the selected layout, BI Publisher applies the styles, header, and footer from the style template.