Hyperion Financial Reporting Studio (FRS) contains a button to copy and paste formatting. This is a powerful tool, but it has some limitations that make it appear less useful than it really is. This post will explore what this tool can do (and show you how to work around its limitations).

Basic Format Paste

We will start using a very basic grid with a little formatting in Column A.

Select the cell that you want to copy.

Hyperion Financial Reporting Studio - select cell to copy

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  1. Click the format paste button once. (Click a second time turns format paste off. Note that the button does not appear depressed or give any visual indication that it is active, but it is.)
Hyperion Financial Reporting Studio - click format paste button

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  1. Click and drag to apply the formatting to multiple cells.
Hyperion Financial Reporting Studio - apply paste to multiple cells

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  1. That’s it! The format is applied to all selected cells.
  2. Once the format paste is used once, it is inactive. The paste format button can be clicked again to apply the format to other cells, if desired.

Format Paste with Multiple Cells

It is possible to select multiple cells and have format pasting in Hyperion FRS. We’re starting by adding formatting to Row 1, but note that the shading in the right-most cell mean that these cells are not all identical.

Hyperion FRS - format pasting to multiple cells

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  1. Select the range of cells that have the format that needs to be copied.
  1. Click the format paste button once.
  2. Select the range to be pasted. (For this example, we will try to apply it to the next two rows.)
Hyperion FRS - select cell range to be pasted

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  1. The result is a bit less than we wanted. It worked, but only for the first row.
Hyperion FRS - cell paste formatting results

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  1. The format paste tool can only paste to ranges of the same size. If we select two rows now, we can paste the format to the next two rows.

Hyperion FRS - select multiple rows

Hyperion FRS - paste multiple rows

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Hyperion FRS - multiple row paste format results

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Limitations of Format Paste

Limit 1: Source range must be of a single type of row/column

There are three types of rows and columns: data, formula and text. Paste format does not work if the source range includes multiple types of rows or columns. At long as the source is of the same type, you can paste to a different type.

This works:

Source is data row:

Hyperion FRS - source is data row

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Destination is formula row (note the equals signs):

Hyperion FRS - destination is formula row

Result:

Hyperion FRS - paste to different type result

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This doesn’t work:

Source is one data row and one formula row:

Hyperion FRS - source is one data and one formula row

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Destination is the column to the right:

Hyperion FRS - paste destination is column to right

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Result (no change):

Hyperion FRS - paste result is no change

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The row and column headers (where members are selected for the dimensions) can be considered a fourth type of row/column. These also cannot be in the source range with another type of row or column, or else the paste format will not work.

Limit 2: The cells where the row and column headers intersect cannot be used as a source (although it can be used as a destination).

This doesn’t work:

Hyperion FRS - intersections can't be used as source

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This does work:

Hyperion FRS - effective select

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Hyperion FRS - effective paste

Limit 3: Conditional formatting cannot be pasted with the format paste tool.


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