topic Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading in QlikView

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:47:16 GMT

Has anyone come across this issue:

I am applying conditional Background colors to an Expression, which is working. However, if a cell that meets the condition is directly under the column heading, then the column heading also gets the new background color, which isn't what we want.

I have already opened a case with Support, but they said QV is working as designed. To me, this is either bad design or a bug. If anyone has also come across this problem, have you found a workaround?

Thanks.

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

johnw — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:43:13 GMT

Yes, I've had this problem. I agree with you that it is either bad design or a bug.

Although I love the product overall, one of the problems I have with QlikTech is how quickly they give the "Working as Designed" answer when something is obviously misbehaving. The column heading should not randomly be assigned a color based on which value just HAPPENED to come first in the chart. I don't care if someone DESIGNED it that way, or if it's a bug. That only changes who is at fault for the broken functionality - the designer or the developer. It doesn't magically make everything OK! The software still has a problem!

QlikTech, your customer has a problem, and it's caused by your bad design. Even if it's technically a true response, "Working as Designed" comes across as both arrogant and dismissive. That's not how you want your customers thinking of you.

Anyway, ranting aside, if they won't agree with you that it's a bug, I would suggest submitting it as a feature request. They seem to have the attitude that if it's a bug, they'll fix it based on a bug report. If it's a design problem (i.e., working as designed), they'll fix it based on a feature request. So I would resubmit your problem as a feature request. Perhaps it will get some attention that way.

Unfortunately, I haven't come up with a workaround. I just suffer with it. If someone else has a workaround, I have at least one application I'd like to fix.

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:27:08 GMT

Thank you John. I will be submitting a feature request.

Rob Wunderlich - I am posting an example. Please check the "Background Example" tab of the qvw file that I'm attaching. I conditionally formatted the background for [Sales Amount] if it is greater than 69,000,000. As you can see, the Central Region has a value greater than 69,000,000 and the gray background color has been applied. However, this same color has also been applied to the column heading.

Thanks.

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

johnw — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:42:59 GMT

Smaller example attached.

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

boorgura — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:03:29 GMT

Hey,

One workaround, may not be the perfect one though, is to put the partial sums on the top(enable partial summing for the first column).

And then you can place a condition on the expression for the background color as:

if(rowno() <> 0, rgb(x,y,z))

Just in case you dint want the subtotals to appear - you can custom format those cells with text color and background color as the same.

That should work.

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

wizardo — Wed, 26 May 2010 08:53:48 GMT

the only problem with using the "rowno()" function is that it cancels the option for user sorting on the chart by dblCliking the header.

the header color problem has another side to it.

you cannot control the header lables to have a difrent color for each.

i (same as john) like the product very much but i think the vilual control of it is very hard on developers. i think a spend atleast 30-35 percent of dev time on silly things like twiking visual options. i am sure i could have saved atleast 50% of this lost time if the options from the product where more rebust.

and its not like visual design havebt changed over the years, if you go look at other products (crystal reports comes to mind) you may think that qlikview was designed in the 18century

Mansyno

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:35:43 GMT

I dont know if this helps but maybe you can try to use a simple table instead of a pivot.

Alfredo Lau

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:25:48 GMT

Hi,

has anyone found a solution for this design bug? Putting the subtotals at the top as described by Rocky is not an option for me, need to have them at the bottom with a dynamic background color which works, but I would like to avoid a dynamic color on the column header... thanks!

Thanks, Lukas

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

richardpayne — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:42:44 GMT

Bump.

I need a workaround or fix for a pivot table.

[Edit: I used visual cues...]

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

pablolabbe — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:35:30 GMT

I'm got the same problem too. To me a workaround was to create new column and set this as a traffic light showing one color only.

I agree with the fact that Qlikview is not so intuitive like other tools to apply conditional coloring and text formating.

Some improvements in this area will be welcome to be more intuititive to the business user.

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:51:29 GMT

Also had this problem , found the solution in another thread now:

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

You can also enable the "Custom Format Cell" to be available all the time with a normal right-mouse click on a cell. Go into User Preferences, Design tab, Select "Always Show Design Menu Items".

You might also change Default Styling Mode to Advanced, then you don't have to set it for individual documents. This is just my preference, it is not directly related to the Custom Format Cell menu.

This works perfect for me!

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

johnw — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:24:40 GMT

What version of QlikView are you using? Custom Format Cell doesn't fix it for me in either 9SR6 or 10SR1. I'm using the trivial example file I posted earlier. I custom format cell on the column heading, change the background color, and nothing happens. The background color expression result for the top line overrides the custom format cell fo the header. I'll be glad if this has been changed in a recent patch, though.

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 09:04:03 GMT

John, I'm using QV 10.00.8811.6 SR1 64-bit.

When i change the headerline by custom cell format, the color isn't changed even if the first line is zero or has no values.

With this function I'm not able to color the subtotal, but the overall header (which is the most important for me).

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

johnw — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:37:23 GMT

I'm not certain you've understood the error we were discussing, because the picture you've posted doesn't demonstrate it. What we're saying is that if the TOP line in the chart is colored by a background color expression (yours does not appear to be), THEN that overrides even the custom format cell option. There is no problem with custom format cell if the top line is NOT colored by the background color expression. Please refer to the posted example of the problem. Please try using custom format cell on the header. I suspect you'll find that it doesn't work - the header will still be yellow. Now get rid of the background color expression. Now your custom format cell color takes effect.

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

Mon, 02 May 2011 08:29:27 GMT

You are right John, i misunderstood it. Sorry guys!

At least I got my problem solved 😜

Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

dvasseur — Mon, 02 May 2011 10:14:08 GMT

The only workaround I have found for this, even if not perfect, is to use visual cues, see attached app.

Re: Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

nicolai_moller — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:08:56 GMT

Is there still no solution for this?

Re: Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

nicolai_moller — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:09:03 GMT

Is there still no solution for this?

Re: Conditional Background and Text Color of Expression Affecting Column Heading

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:48:01 GMT

I have a pivot table and I can change the color in each of the desired rows by either 1) going to "color background" and using the formula RGB (x, y,z) or 2) under the "custom format cell". It's the easiest solution that I found so far. I hope this works for you too