There is a "Rows per page" property on a list or crosstab.

CA 12.0.2

I want to set the default delivery options for a single report to always be:

• Output - Excel
• Burst - Yes
• Save to File System - Yes (with appropriate defaults)

Note: The report has prompts - I want the user to enter these, but never have to enter the delivery criteria.

In searching the web, I am seeing references to "Under the Report options section, check the box to Override the default values".
However, I am not seeing this checkbox anywhere!

Assuming this is possible, am I missing something straightforward or is there something needed to configure this option?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Adam.

I see your intended example output.  Just want to ask if this kind of similar (but not same) output might be acceptable as it's easy to produce in a List report.

Field A       Field B
-----------   -----------
A1             B1
                 B2
-------------------------
A2             B3
-------------------------
A3             B4
                 B5
-------------------------

The above can be done by Grouping the first column.

I can also image a way it might be done (or at least influenced) with a long Case statement but I don't know if all of the values/variables in both columns are always known to you.

I have a report with a heat map visualization which is causing very serious confusion across much of the intended audience.  I did not create the report - a peer did.

I'd like to explain to my peer why the report might be causing confusion.  I believe there is at least one and likely two design flaws.

Is there any forum user with relevant credentials (so I can substantiate that the input is valid and external) who is willing to take a gross look at one example of the heat map and provide input?

I know there is a risk to report run time and/or rendering time is the number of rows per page is set too high.  So, I no plans to change setting to 100 rows for example.

However, I have many user who complain that the default of 20 rows is too few and causes unnecessary Paging Up/Down.

I am aware this default row limit can be change at least on a per report basis.  But, is there either a per-user or Cognos instance-wide override?

Thank you.

That worked beautifully in 2025 - thanks! :-)

If I right-click on the package name, I have an option labeled "Manage external data..."  This allows me to include a xlsx or csv file (maybe others) in the report.  Then the resulting package is saved to an arbitrary location.

In Cognos 10.2.1 I could have Cognos ask the user for the location of the file.  I still have a package or two that do this.  It's super helpful.

In Cognos 12.0.4 (and 11.1.x and 11.0.x) this is not possible.  The feature still exists -- I can include a spreadsheet with the source package -- but I can't make Cognos ask the user for the spreadsheet.  I seem to remember this was more of a browser issue related to security.  IE could do it because IE was, by definition, a security flaw.

So, now I have a report or two that ask the user for an arbitrary spreadsheet.  This is super helpful because if two users want to run the report at the same time but with different data, they don't clobber each other.

And, yes...  I responded to https://www.cognoise.com/index.php/topic,38363.msg125926.html#msg125926 with a possible way to do this.  But it turns out it doesn't scale well.  Once the data is more than trivial, my proposed solution fails.

Is there a good way to incorporate arbitrary data, provided by the user running the report, into a report developed in a modern version of Cognos Analytics running on a modern web browser?

@dougp thank you for your response. I'll try and get this working.

Query:  Query1
data items:
[itemnumber]
[htscode00]
[htscode01]
[htscode02]
[htscode03]
[htscode04]
[htscode05]
[htscode06]
[htscode07]
[htscode08]
[htscode09]
[htscode10]


Query:  Query2
data items:
[itemnumber]


Query:  num
SQL =
with
a as (
  select 0 as num
  union all
  select num + 1
  from a
  where num < 10
)
select *
from a(or equivalent for your RDBMS)
data items:
[num]


Query:  Query3
Query2 inner join num on 1=1
data items:
[itemnumber]
[num]


Query:  Query4
Query3 inner join Query1 on itemnumber = itemnumber
data items:
[itemnumber]
[num]
[htscode] =
case [num]
  when 0 then [htscode00]
  ...
  when 10 then [htscode10]
endfilter:  [htscode] is not null

One of my customers is asking for the following:

They want the data in one of the database tables to be stacked vertically in a list report. The database table screen shot is pic1.jpg and as you can see the hts codes are in column/horizontal fashion with a lot of NULL values displayed.

The way they want the data displayed in the report is in pic2.jpg, where the item is listed with the hts codes stacked vertically.

The problem is this... they don't want to see the NULL/blank values. There are 11 possible hts codes and many of them will be NULL. They don't want to see 11 lines in the excel export for item number 10009000, with 1 row of data and 10 blank/NULL rows under it. They only want to see 1 row for item 10009000.

Same for item number 20002410. They only want to see the 5 hts codes in the column in excel, not the 6 blank extra values.

I've tried numerous ways to get this to work...

1) I tried creating variables in the report for the NULL values, then inserted a table in the hts code column of the list report with singletons for each hts code. I added a render variable on the singleton and added a style variable to the table row (box type = None) so the NULL values wouldn't show... that didn't work.
2) I created some custom SQL using a CTE and filtered out the NULL values in the final select statement and joined that custom SQL query to the main query by item number. That got me where I needed to be with stacking the hts codes vertically and not displaying the NULL records, BUT, I ran into an issue where the counts/amounts in the report duplicated because any item number with more than 1 hts code would produce more than 1 item in the join, causing the duplication.

Is what my customer wants possible? If so, how? Thank you!