Guidelines and Best Practices for Free-Form

Consider these guidelines and best practices when working in free-form mode.

• Grids do not need to start in cell A1.
• A grid must have at least one row dimension and one column dimension.
• Each row dimension can contain members of only one dimension. Each column dimension can contain members of only one dimension.
• Members of one dimension can be entered only in one of the following regions:

  • In the same row

  • In the same column

  • Anywhere in the page dimension region (Oracle Essbase and Standard Smart View Ad Hoc Behavior-mode Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud applications only)

• The page dimension region can contain members of different dimensions, but no two members in the page dimension region can belong to the same dimension (Essbase and Standard Smart View Ad Hoc Behavior-mode EPM Cloud applications only only).
• Dimensions entered into the page dimension region override any corresponding default or existing dimensions in the page dimension region. For example, if the page dimension contains a Year dimension, and you enter Qtr1, then Qtr replaces Year in the page dimension (Essbase and Standard Smart View Ad Hoc Behavior-mode EPM Cloud applications only only).
• The replacement labels specified in the Data Options page of the Options dialog apply in free-form mode.
• Numerical entries are identified as data in the data region, and as comments outside the data region. If you want to use a number as a member name, then as a best practice, precede the member name with a single quotation mark; for example, '100.
• As a best practice, precede member names that contain spaces between words with a single quotation mark.
• When connected to a database that supports duplicate member names, select Distinct Member Name on the Member Options page of the Oracle Smart View for Office Options dialog box to display fully qualified member names in the worksheet. To enter duplicate members, use this syntax for qualified member names:

  [Income].[Other]
  [Expenses].[Other]

• Aliases from the current alias table are permitted in free-form grids, but aliases from other alias tables are treated as comments.
• In an ad hoc grid, if you insert a column and type a member name in the new column, and want to change the alias table for the sheet, then as a best practice, you must first refresh the sheet before changing the alias table.

• If a member name contains a comma (,), then as a best practice, enclose the entire name in quotation marks (" ").

  Use this syntax:

  "mbr_name, mbr_name"

  For example:

  "Tablets, Smartphones"

• When updating text datatype values in free-form mode, the Submit Without Refresh action should be used. This applies to Standard Ad Hoc mode only (the application setting, Smart View Ad Hoc Behavior=Standard.)