Clearing cells of content

You can clear cells in Excel to remove the contents, such as formulas or data. The cleared cells remain as blank cells on the worksheet. Formats, such as number formats, conditional formats, and borders are retained.

You may want to clear cells before saving a report so that

  • report consumers are required to refresh data to obtain the latest changes from the data source
  • report consumers are authenticated before they are able to view report content

Tip: On the IBM® Cognos® Office toolbar, click the Clear All Data button Clear All Data icon.

You can also automate this task by using the ClearAllData method. For more information, see ClearAllData.

Clearing the contents does not break the link to the data sources. Because of the way newer versions of Microsoft Excel, such as Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 open workbooks created in Excel 2003, some values are visible in a published and cleared Excel 2003 workbook when it is opened in Excel 2007 or 2010. Opening the workbook in a newer version of Microsoft Excel triggers recalculation, which includes refresh of the IBM Cognos data.

You can continue with your crosstab, list, or analysis, and then refresh your content with current data from the content store.

For information about reports or content cleared in IBM Cognos for Microsoft Office, see Remove a report or data from a Microsoft Office document.