Member Entry Directly in a Sheet

Instead of using the Report Editor dialog box, you can enter text and figures directly in the cells of a sheet if you know the names of the members you want to retrieve. The Member Recognition feature must be activated.

You can enter a complete dimension member name or just a part of it. If you correctly enter the complete dimension member name, as soon as you press the Enter key, a green flash briefly appears in the cell, indicating that the member has been recognized. When you enter a part of a dimension member name:

If the member name fragment is unique in the cube, as soon as you press the Enter key, the name is automatically completed and a green flash briefly appears in the cell, indicating that the member has been recognized.
If the member name fragment is not sufficient to identify the member, the Ambiguous Name dialog box opens, displaying all the members contained in the cube that might match the entered member. If you do not select any member in the dialog box and close it - and provided that the Apply Specific Formatting to Unrecognized Members user option is selected, the cell in which you have entered the member name is applied a specific formatting to indicate that the member is not recognized. The formatting is a standard Microsoft Excel style called EPMUnrecognizedMember. You can modify the settings of the style by clicking the Edit button next to the option: the Microsoft Excel standard Style dialog box opens.

In addition, you can also enter a member name - or just a part of it - along with a prefix to narrow down the search to one of the following items: ID, name, caption, code, description, full unique name, property name:

Note the items below are not case-sensitive.

To look for a member ID that contains the text "member", enter the following in a cell: ID=member
To look for a member code that contains the text "member", enter the following in a cell: CODE=member
To look for a member name that contains the text "member", enter the following in a cell: NAME=member
To look for a member caption that contains the text "member", enter the following in a cell: CAPTION=member
To look for a member description that contains the text "member", enter the following in a cell: DESC=member
To look for a member unique name that contains the text "member", enter the following in a cell: UID=member

Note you can also specify the dimension in which the search is performed. See an example below.

Example

To look for the member caption "USA,INC", enter the following in a cell: caption=USA,INC
To look for the member caption "USA,INC" in the dimension "Company" enter the following in a cell: caption=Company:USA,INC
To look for the member "USA,INC" in the dimension "Company" enter the following in a cell: Company:USA,INC

Note The recognized members are uniquely identified. When you select a member in the sheet, the Microsoft Office Excel Formula bar displays: = EPMOlapMemberO(xxx).

Note You can define a member based on a formula. If the member is unique, it is converted into a member and the link will be kept inside the formula. For example, you can have "=Sheet2!D4" picking up the value "Ohio" from another worksheet. This allows you to create reporting templates where you can change "Ohio" to say "New York" in one place and then update (Refresh) all the related reports to get "New York" data. In this case, the report loses its dynamicity and therefore becomes a static report.

Note To create a blank member, enter blank in a cell of a report and press the Enter key. For more information about blank members, see Blank Row and Column Insertion.