Guidelines for Working with Native Excel Formatting and Planning Forms

When designing a grid, care should be taken to avoid conflicts between custom Excel formatting and Smart View cell styles.

For some ad hoc analysis operations, not all Excel formatting may be preserved. You may need to reapply formatting after performing certain operations.

When a saved ad hoc grid is opened, Smart View tries to preserve the formatting that was saved on the Planning server. For further ad hoc operations, existing formatting options apply; for example, Use Excel formatting or cell styles.

To preserve custom Excel formatting on ad hoc operations, select the Use Excel Formatting and the Move formatting on operations options on the Formatting page of the Options dialog box.

Formatting can affect performance, especially during ad hoc operations when the Move formatting on operations option is enabled.

Saving formatting is not recommended on large forms (for example, forms of 20,000 or more cells).

There are differences between grids rendered in Smart View and those rendered in the browser in Planning. When a saved grid is rendered in Planning, some formatting may not appear exactly as it does in Smart View. Planning will attempt to approximate the Smart View formatting.

The Planning administrator may have defined certain formatting on a form. Planning end users can overwrite this formatting and save it on the form. It can then be merged with the administrator's formatting based on the option selected for this form in Planning by the administrator. Refer to the Planning documentation for more information.

Save formatting functionality is not supported on composite Planning forms.

Ad hoc analysis started from a saved Planning grid will inherit the formatting options saved as part of the grid.

To use Smart View Cell Styles or the Use Excel Formatting option for an ad hoc grid generated from a saved grid, complete the following steps: