PCXML: Removing Borders for Specific Cells

[daniel_mmi]

I'm in a bit of a reports nightmare, trying to make an 'exact match' for an Excel report that has some of the fields arranged for visual appeal, rather than any structural purpose. I've managed to get things lined up pretty well, except that boxes that 'should' be floating in blank space (i.e. no borders) are instead enclosed in a row or column of bordered cells.

I know the 'formula' option in the table style rules panel allows for PCXML options, and the help documentation mentions the 'border' property, but it gives no indication of how to use it.

Does anybody out there have a simple snippet I could put in that 'formula' box to tell it not to put a border on a particular cell. In broader terms, if anyone could point me to a primer on PCXML attributes, that would be sweet, too.

[PamW · Accepted solution]

The Formula option can control borders only if the column rules can override the table settings as shown here:

 

The formula tool will uses CSS styles, so the following in a column rule will give you a red border.

[Jason]

Is it possible to get the formula to apply to the header as well as the data?  I tried setting Apply to be "Always to Header and Data", or even setting a specific formula for just the header, but neither seem to have any effect. 

[daniel_mmi]

For my purposes, I made a single-row text table and joined it to the results, then used a row rule to make it look like a header row. It's not exactly graceful, but it worked.

[PamW]

Hi Jason:

You want to change the heading format with a formula? 

Not sure that you can do that... the header style is set in the Table Settings. Can you give a specific example of what you want to do?

If you wanted to apply formatting based on a formula I think you would have drop the header down to the first row of data and hide the header in the table configuration. If you can provide a specific example of what you are trying to do I will try to point you in the correct direction.

[Jason]

I was hoping to set thicker borders to help call out a few columns of note.  But if differentiating borders is only available to the data portion and not the header it won't work.  I ended up splitting my single table into a bunch of different tables and then using the layout tool to recombine.  

Followup question though, has anyone had luck getting a line style besides solid to work?  I've tried dotted, dashed, double, no luck.  Is this a specific version of PCXML, or is it just lacking full functionality?

[jineshnp31]

@Jason 

Wondering if adding thick borders to table headers ever worked for you? I am looking to do the same right now but couldn't get it to work.

Even though I select Headers and Data, it still only applies to data only for some reason.