5. Formatting Presentations

Exercise Objectives

In this exercise, you will learn how to create highly formatted crosstabs and graphs using the Presentation Editor.

Exercise Description

There are several ways of formatting crosstabs and graphs:

This exercise introduces you to each of these methods. In addition, you will learn how to create data-driven formats that let you identify exception data by using special formatting properties. This feature enables users to recognize exception data quickly. For example:

Exercise Tasks

Formatting crosstabs

To add a title and subtitle to the crosstabs:

  1. If the crosstab that you defined in the Creating Presentations exercise is not already open, right-click Sales Analysis Crosstab and choose Presentation Editor.
  2. In the toolbar that is located above the crosstab on the Presentation Editor, choose the Customizer tool (which is the second tool on the toolbar and has the the Show Customizer tooltip; it appears to the right of the QueryBuilder tool).
  3. In the Crosstab Customizer, select the Titles tab.
  4. Enter Asian Sales Summary as the title of the crosstab.
  5. Choose Title font to display the Font dialog box. Change the title font properties as follows:
  6. Choose OK to return to the Titles tab.
  7. Enter Stoplight Report as the subtitle of the crosstab.
  8. Choose Subtitle font to display the Font dialog box. Change the subtitle properties as follows:
  9. Choose OK to close the Font dialog box.
  10. Choose OK to close the Crosstab Customizer.

To format the crosstab using the formatting toolbar

  1. Click the Geography highlighter bar (the cell above Asia) to select Geography headers. Use the formatting toolbar at the top to establish the following format: bold header text that uses a font size of 14 point and a fill color of pastel orange.
  2. To change the format of the data for Asia only, click the highlighter bar (cell) to the right of Asia. Use the formatting toolbar to set the text for data values to bold, font size 14 point, and background color dark gray.
  3. To change the text color for the data cell All Products in Asia to white, click the specific data cell and apply the changes.
  4. From the File menu, choose Save All to save your work.

To format the crosstab using the Property Inspector and Structure Window

  1. From the View menu on JDeveloper, choose Property Inspector to ensure that the Property Inspector is visible and choose Structure Window to ensure that the Structure Window is visible.
  2. In the Structure Window pane below the System-Navigator pane, select Sales Analysis Crosstab. Notice that the Property Inspector is updated to show the properties of the crosstab.
  3. In the Property Inspector, click the button to the right of the gridColor property value.
  4. Select Color.blue from the Standard Colors drop-down list. Choose OK. Notice that the grid color has changed to blue.
  5. In the Structure Window pane, expand Sales Analysis Crosstab and select dataviewTitle.
  6. In the Property Inspector, select True for the underline property value. Notice that the title text becomes underlined.
  7. From the File menu, choose Save All to save your work.

To specify data-driven formatting for "Big Shots" (Sales >1000000):

  1. Click any data cell in the crosstab.
  2. On the toolbar that is located above the crosstab, choose the Customizer tool.
  3. In the Crosstab Customizer, select the Format tab.
  4. Choose Data in the New format box to create a new data format.
  5. In the Format data dialog box, specify Big Shots for the format name.
  6. Choose Color to change the background color to green.
  7. Specify the rules that drive the data selection that the Big Shots format should apply to:

Do not leave the Crosstab Customizer Format tab. You will now create a second format that designates poor performers (Sales < 25000).

To specify data-driven formatting for "Losers" (Sales < 25000):

  1. In the Format tab, choose Data in the New format box to create a new data format.
  2. In the Format data dialog box, specify Losers for the format name.
  3. To change the background color to red, choose Color.
  4. Specify the rules that drive the data selection that the Losers format should apply to:
  5. In the Crosstab Customizer, choose OK to return to the crosstab.
  6. From the File menu, select Save All to save your work.

The crosstab now uses the data-driven rules that you just specified to display exception data cells. The Big Shots show data cells that are highlighted in green where Sales > 1000000. The Losers show data cells that are highlighted in red where Sales data < 25000.

Formatting graphs

There are several ways to modify the appearance of a graph:

In this part of the exercise, you will use all of these approaches to modify the graph. The goal is to update the graph so that it is a horizontal bar graph with updated titles and series formats as displayed below:

To add a title and subtitle to the graph using the graph customizer:

  1. If the graph that you defined in the Creating Presentations exercise is not already open, right-click Sales Analysis Graph and choose Presentation Editor.
  2. In the toolbar that is located above the crosstab, choose the Customizer tool.
  3. In the Crosstab Customizer, select the Titles tab.
  4. Enter Sales in Asia as the title of the graph.
  5. Enter Top 5 Countries Based on Retail Sales as the subtitle of the graph.
  6. Choose OK to apply the changes.

To format the graph directly using the formatting toolbar:

  1. To select the graph, click any part of the graph image. Notice that the formatting toolbar is updated to show the properties of the currently selected graph component.
  2. Change the graph type by selecting horizontal bar from the Graph Type tool.
  3. Modify the format of the ordinal axis labels. To set the font size to 11 point, click the Sales China label and select 11 from the Font Size list. Then, select the Bold item in the toolbar.
  4. To remove the gridlines from the graph, click the plot area and select the Show Grid toolbar item.
  5. While the plot area is still highlighted, use the Fill Color tool to change the fillcolor to a pastel lemon.
  6. Select the bar that corresponds to the series All Products and use the Fill Color tool to change the bar color to White.
  7. Update the color of the graph title. Select the Sales in Asia title and use the Font color tool to change the fillcolor to blue.
  8. To set the subtitle font to italic, click Top 5 Countries based on Retail Sales and select the Italic Font tool.
To reposition the graph components, move the legend as follows:

To format the graph using the Property Inspector and Structure Window

  1. In the Structure Window pane below the System-Navigator pane, expand Sales Analysis Graph.
  2. Scroll down the list of subcomponents under Sales Analysis Graph, and click y1MajorTick.
  3. In the Property Inspector, select True for the visible property value. Notice that only the vertical grid lines appear on the graph.
  4. From the File menu, choose Save All to save your work.

Exercise Summary

In this exercise, you learned how to create highly formatted graphs and crosstabs using the Presentation Editor. This included both simple and data-driven formatting displays. In addition, you learned how to apply these formats using the following techniques: (1) customizers, (2) the formatting toolbar, and (3) the Property Inspector with the Stucture Window.

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