Attributes Panel

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Attributes Panel

The attributes panel is the top right panel on the Report Designer that is used to modify common attributes for simple objects, especially text.

Single click to select your object then make changes in the attributes panel. Often times you will have to double click to drill down to the simple object or property that you want to modify.

attributepanel

Color Tab

The color tab is used to change any color in your report. Suppose you wanted to change the fill (background) color of a text label. There are several ways to accomplish this:

1.	Left click the label to select it. Click a color on the attribute panel. You'll notice that fill property gets enabled and the background color set to your choice.

2.	Select the label. Click on the colored square under the fill tab of the inspector panel to select the color. Choose a color on the attribute panel.

3.	Select the label. Drag a color down from the color panel to the colored square under the fill tab of the inspector panel.

All of these changed the fill color. To change the font color of that label you would double click the text label, highlighted the text, then changed the color. The key is getting used to the selection model to change the color of the desired property.

attributepanelcolor

Font Tab

The font tab is used to change the family, size, and options of fonts. Selection tends to be much more forgiving since there are relatively few font properties. For example, selecting a label is the same as double clicking that label then highlighting all of the text, with respect to the font panel.

To change the color of text, highlight it, then go to the color tab.

attributepanelfont

Format Tab

The format tab is used to apply formatting to dates and numbers. Highlight desired text and choose formatting. Dates are formatted like the expression dateFormat function (shown below). None removes formatting.

attributepanelformat

For the following table, assume the Date is 7/8/2005 3:05:00 PM (July 8th, 2005).

Date Pattern Components
Character	Function	Example
M	Month	7
MM	Month, forced 2 digits	07
MMM	Name of month, abbreviated.	Jul
MMMM	Name of month, full	July
d	Day of the month.	8
dd	Day of the month,forced 2 digits.	08
E	Day of the week, abbreviated.	Sun
EEEE	Day of the week, full.	Sunday
yy	Year - abbreviated.	05
yyyy	Year - Full	2005
H	Hour of the day (0-23)	15
h	Hour of the day (1-12)	3
m	Minute	5
mm	Minute, forced 2 digits.	05
s	Seconds	00
a	AM/PM marker	PM
z	Time zone, abbreviated.	PST
zzzz	Time zone, full	Pacific Standard Time

Keys Tab

The keys tab is a convenience that displays your data and builtin functions. Clicking "Built-ins" will toggle between user data and builtin functions. The typical use of the Keys Tab is dragging keys into your report. Here are a few examples of how that could work:

•	Dragging last, a string data key, to your report will create the text label, @last@

•	Dragging last to text in a selected text label will add in the text @last@.

•	Dragging a DataSet will open a window prompting to create a table, labels, graph, or crosstab.

attributepanelkeys

TIP	Get to know the attribute panel. Most shared properties reside here. The only other panel to know is the inspector panel, where more complex or object specific settings reside.