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The Workbooks and Sheets feature in the Cross Table tool is similar to the Decks and Slides feature in StoryCreator. The Workbooks and Sheets feature allows you to create a set of tables (sheets) and save these as a workbook. The workbook can be exported to Excel or shared with other Visualizations users. The workbook functionality improves efficiency when bulk creating tables, as sheets can be duplicated, reordered, etc. All sheets in a workbook can be exported to an Excel file.
The Workbook and Sheets panel is displayed on the left side of the screen. At the top of the panel, you can manage the workbooks. Below that, you can manage the sheets.
Tip: If you do not see the Workbook and Sheets panel and you want to use this feature, speak to your Admin. Your Admin must open the Setup modal at the top right. Under FAVORITES/WORKBOOKS AND SHARING, toggle on Allow saving Workbooks. Then, select Save.
Note: Workbooks and Favorites cannot be used in the same Cross Table report. If you enable Workbooks, and there are already saved Favorites, each existing saved Favorite will be converted to a Workbook with a single sheet.
1: Workbooks Panel
In the Workbooks panel, you can save, load, share, and export the workbooks you build.
1. WORKBOOKS: The title of your current workbook will display here. To switch workbooks, click the title to see your workbooks and workbooks shared with you.
2. New: Create a new workbook.
3. Open...: Switch workbooks. A modal displaying your workbooks and workbooks shared with you will pop up.
4. Save and Save as...: Save changes to the Workbook, or Save the Workbook as a new Workbook.
5. Share...: Share the workbook with all or selected users.
6. Export to Excel: Export the Workbook as an .xlsx file.
7. Workbook filters...: Apply filters to all sheets within the current workbook for easier data exploration.
1.1: View saved Workbooks
To manage your workbooks, click the title of your current workbook to switch workbooks. A popup modal displays with your workbooks and workbooks shared with you.
You can delete workbooks from this modal. The delete option is to the right of each listed workbook.
1.2: Create a new Workbook
Click New to create a new workbook. If you do not save your current workbook, your changes will be lost when you create a new workbook.
1.3: Open a saved Workbook
To open an existing workbook, select the Open option in the Workbook panel. In the popup modal, you will see your own workbooks and workbooks shared with you. To load any of these reports, select the name of the one you want to open.
1.4: Save Workbook
To save your workbook, click Save as in the Workbook panel. In the popup modal, enter the name and an optional description of the workbook. You can also choose if the workbook should be loaded by default the next time you enter the same Cross Table tool report.
Tip: If you are working in an already saved workbook, or have opened an existing one, and want to save the latest changes, use the Save button instead.
Note: If your Cross Table contains a hierarchical filter, the selected nodes are saved on each sheet.
1.5: Sharing your workbook
You can share your workbook using the Sharing option in the Workbook panel. You can share it with all users or selected users.
When sharing a workbook with all users, only users with access to all items (including Hierarchical filters, Filters and Variable subsets) in the Workbook can see and load the shared Favorite.When sharing a Favorite with selected users, you can only share with users who have access to all the items in the shared Workbook.
To give users permission to save changes to the workbook, see 1.5.1: Collaborative Editing
To open a Workbook shared by another user, open the Workbook panel. The tab Shared workbooks lists all the workbooks shared with you by other users. Administrator users will see all Workbooks saved by all users of the report in this list, even non-shared workbooks.
Note: If a Report User has a need to explicitly share a workbook with an Administrator user, Share with individual Administrator users must be toggled on in the Settings modal under FAVORITES/WORKBOOKS AND SHARING.
1.5.1: Collaborative Editing
In the workbook panel, under Shared Workbooks, the column Collaborative editing allowed indicates if edits can be saved to the shared workbook. A green check mark icon identifies workbooks where edits are possible. A red "X" icon indicates where saving edits to a shared workbook is not possible.
When opening a shared workbook supporting collaborative editing, updating is not allowed by default, as the save option is disabled. To save edits to the shared workbook, Enable Update mode. The Save option can now be used.
Note: Although multiple users can load a shared workbook simultaneously to view results, only one user at a time can enable Update mode. Edits made by users not in Update mode will not be saved to the original workbook; however, the edits can be saved as a new workbook.
After saving your changes, Forsta recommends disabling Update mode so other users are not prevented from saving changes in the same workbook. Update mode is automatically disabled when the user navigates to another report, selects another workbook, creates a new workbook, logs out or after 20 minutes of inactivity.
1.6: Exporting Your Workbook
1.6.1: Exporting to Excel
The current open workbook can be exported to Excel from the Workbook panel.
To make an export, click the Export option in the Workbook panel and select your desired export option.
Export all sheets as separate sheets
Export all tables as separate sheets
Export all sheets into one single sheet
Export selected sheet(s) as separate sheets
Export selected sheet(s) tables as separate sheets
Export selected sheet(s) into one single sheet
If you select an option with "as separate sheets", the workbook sheets/tables will be exported as separate sheets within the .xlsx file.
A table of contents sheet with clickable links is included in Excel exports from the Cross Table tool when two or more sheets are present. This makes it easier to navigate in exported Workbooks with many sheets. If the downloaded Excel file only contains a single sheet, the table of contents sheet is not added.
1.6.2: Exporting to Google Sheets
Note: To enable this option on your customer account, contact your Forsta representative.
Workbooks and sheets can be exported into Google Sheets from the Cross Table Tool.
Your administrator must enable the Google Sheets export option for your Cross Table report.
As an Admin, open your Cross Table report in Design/Preview mode.
Click the Settings icon at the bottom.
In the Settings modal, under Export Options, select Allow Google sheets export. Then select Save.
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The Export to Google Sheets option now displays.
To export to Google sheets, select the Export to Google Sheets option from the Workbooks menu. Then select one of the following options:
Export all sheets as separate sheets
Export all tables as separate sheets
Export all sheets into one single sheet
Export selected sheet(s) as separate sheets
Export selected sheet(s) tables as separate sheets
Export selected sheet(s) into one single sheet
After proceeding with the export, you will be provided with a link to a Google Sheets document. This link will also be emailed to you.
Important: The link to the Google Sheets document is only valid for 72 hours. To maintain access to the document, you will need to save the Google Sheets document under your own Google account.
Note: The table of contents sheet and related hyperlinks between sheets included in the Excel export are not included in the Google Sheets export.
1.7: Workbook level filters
The Workbook level filter allows for more efficient table production and data exploration. With the workbook filters, all the sheets are filtered from a single location.
Applied Workbook filters are displayed at the top of each sheet and also in the table key like ordinary sheet level filters.
Note: The same variable cannot be applied as both a Question/Split/Filter and a Workbook filter. If a variable is applied in the sheet setup and as Workbook filter, the Workbook filter is ignored.
For example, if Gender=Male is applied as Workbook filter and Gender=Woman is applied as a sheet filter, the Workbook filter Gender=Male is ignored, and a warning message is shown for the user.
Because the same variable cannot be used in the sheet definition and as a Workbook filter simultaneously, the hierarchy structure can never be used as Workbook level filter since the hierarchy is always applied on a sheet level.
Workbook level filters are not available in Cross table reports using Variable subsets since all the different sheets could have different sets of available variables when Variable subsets are used.
2: Sheets Panel
The Sheet panel displays all the sheets in the current workbook. You can add new sheets, rearrange the sheets using drag and drop, duplicate sheets, delete sheets, etc. A context menu appears on right click, which includes the same options as displayed at the top of the Sheet panel.