Creating a New Workbook

While working with Discoverer, you may want to create additional workbooks and worksheets of your own. For example, you may want to consolidate project-specific information in a separate workbook that you share with other team members.

If you have the appropriate access rights (granted by the Discoverer Administrator), you can create workbooks and worksheets.

NOTE: You use the same process to create workbooks and worksheets. In fact, to create a new workbook, you create the initial worksheet for the new workbook. Thus, the steps described in this section are for both processes--building a new workbook and building a new worksheet.

Click to learn how
To create a new workbook or worksheet:
To add an item to the current worksheet:
To delete an item from the current worksheet:

See also:
Opening an Existing Workbook
Editing a Worksheet
Saving a Workbook
Refreshing Data in a Workbook
Deleting a Workbook


To create a new workbook or worksheet:

1. Choose either of the following:
   • Choose Sheet | New Sheet to build a new worksheet.

   • Choose File | New to create a new workbook.

The Worksheet Wizard dialog appears. This dialog is where you select the layout--table or crosstab--that you want to use to display the data on the new worksheet.

NOTE: The sample dialogs in the rest of this section are for creating a new worksheet. The dialogs for creating a new workbook are the same, except the dialog titles are "Create Workbook" instead of "Create Worksheet."

2. Click the icon for the type of display for the new worksheet. As you select each type, the corresponding description is displayed as well.

   
   
   

3. Click Next. This dialog is for selecting the data that you want on the new worksheet.

   
   

This dialog lists the data in the business area that you can use to build the new worksheet. The following table describes the icons that you may see on the dialog.

Table 2-1 New Worksheet Icons

Sample Icon	Description
	Business area--displays a business area created by the Discoverer Administrator; to select another business area for the new worksheet, click the drop-down arrow and choose from the list of business areas. A business area contains one or more folders.
	Folders--organizes the items that you can select for your worksheets.Clicking the plus (+) and minus (-) symbol next to the folder opens and closes it.
	Axis Item--corresponds to a column on a table or a level on a crosstab axis; axis items remain constant and have relatively few unique values, such as the names of Departments in your company, or the names of your Sales Regions. The values of an axis item are shown as a list of values.
	Axis Item Value--one of the values of an axis item.
	Numeric Item--represents numeric data; The values of numeric items can change as you analyze the data, for example, summing profits will produce different results for cities than for regions. Numeric items behave as Axis items on table and correspond to the data in the body of a crosstab.
	Aggregations--the mathematical functions to aggregate the data; for text items such as Region, the typical aggregations are Count, Max, and Min. That is, you can count the number of text items, or find the highest or lowest (where A might be the highest and Z the lowest). For numeric data, the typical aggregations are Sum, Count, Max, Min, Average, and Detail. For example, you can find the Sum or Average of the numeric data with the aggregation. The aggregation in boldface type is the default. The Discoverer Administrator defines the default aggregation.
	Condition--a filter for finding specific data. Conditions/Calculations defined by the Discoverer Administrator appear in folders, but user-defined Conditions/calculations do not.
	Calculation--a mathematical expression to produce new data from other items. Conditions/Calculations defined by the Discoverer Administrator appear in folders, but user-defined Conditions/calculations do not.

4. Select the business area from the drop-down menu at the top of the Available list.

5. Click the plus (+) sign next to a folder to see all of the items in it.

   Folders containing items available for the current worksheet are active. Others are grayed out.

   Items may have plus signs next to them as well, indicating you can select values for those items as well. For example, a City item contains the names of the cities in the database. You can select a specific city to add to the worksheet. By doing this, you are implicitly creating and activating the Condition `City' = <name>.

6. From the list of available data items, select the specific data items to add to your worksheet. Shift-click on items to select multiple items. Ctrl-click to select items not adjacent to one another. The Right Arrow button in the middle of the dialog becomes active.

7. Click the Right Arrow button to move the available items to the Selected list. Those items are then the data items for the new worksheet. You can also drag the selected items from the Available list to the Selected list. The following example shows several items moved to the Selected list

   
   

You can select data at various levels in the Available list. For example, selecting a folder and moving it to the Selected list, moves all the data within the folder to the list. Similarly, moving an item to the Selected list moves all values in it to the list and, ultimately, to the worksheet. For example, moving the City item to the Selected list results in the names of all the cities being on the worksheet.

Moving a numeric item to the Selected list automatically includes its default aggregation functions. All values are automatically included as well. Selecting and moving an axis item, however, does not automatically include aggregate functions.

To remove an item from the Selected list, click it and drag it back to the Available list, or click the Left Arrow button.

Depending on the items you select from multiple folders, you may see a dialog that asks you to identify the manner in which the folders are joined. This means there are multiple ways of combining the items they contain and you may select which way will be used.

NOTE: Contact your Discoverer Administrator to describe the specific choices you are given. Often, your Discoverer Administrator only intended one of these options to be available, and they can modify a business area to remove the extra option. For more information about join paths, see "About Multiple Join Paths".

9. At this point, you can click Finish to create a new worksheet. Clicking Next shows the next (optional) page for adding other features to the new worksheet.

NOTE: To change selections on the previous pages, click the Back button.