Retrieving Data into Asymmetric Reports

When you retrieve data into a worksheet, the resulting report can be either symmetric or asymmetric. Symmetric reports are characterized by repeating identical groups of members. For example, a symmetric report may contain Actual and Budget members nested below Year members (Qtr1, Qtr2, Qtr3, and Qtr4).

An asymmetric report is characterized by groups of nested members that differ by at least one member. There can be a difference in the number of members or in the names of members.

You can create asymmetric reports in one of the following ways:

Enter member names into the worksheet in free-form retrieval mode.
Zooming in with Within Selected Group selected on the Member Options page of the Options dialog box.
Suppress rows that contain missing values, zero values, or underscore characters during data retrievals.

Retrieving data into an asymmetric report may take a long time on large reports.