Adding background color to cells is possible in mTABWeb. Customizing the cell background color allows for easier data tracking and
comparisons in the spreadsheet view and even carries forward to other areas, such as the TopN report.
From the spreadsheet view, cell coloring can be added in a number of ways. An area of the spreadsheet can be highlighted and then through either
the right-click menu or the Format menu, the Range option can be selected. The dialog that appears offers the ability to change the font size,
color and style, to change numerous attributes of the cell, such as number of decimal places or % indication on/off and provides control of the
background color for the cell.
The other method is to again highlight a range of cells from the spreadsheet and then to use the Background Color toolbar icon. This offers a
drop down list of available colors for you to choose from.
By repeating this process, we can color any areas of the spreadsheet that we wish. You will note that the colors can be applied either to the
numerical cells, the question response text or any combination of the two that we require.
Not only can coloring be added to the spreadsheet to call out interesting items, it can be used to track those items during the use of the
TopN Report. If we select columns D thru I and run a TopN Report, we see the following.
The cell coloring that was used in the spreadsheet has been carried to the report and allows us to visually track the placement of a response
from brand to brand. In this case for example, we can immediately see that "Convenient Location" is rated higest for all brands except Brand C.
This method of cell coloring in the TopN Report is incredibly useful, but is not the only coloring tool we have available in this view. Added to
the TopN view, we have the "TopN Color Options" tool bar button.
If we started with an uncolored spreadsheet and clicked on this button a dialog appears.
The dialog shows the most frequently mentioned responses from the selected row question and for each assigns a color. It offers the ability for
the user to change the font, color and overall look for each response, through the use of the Change button, along with a selector for the user
to decide how many responses will be colored. The Colorize check box allows this feature to be easily turned on and off when needed and the Save
Formatting as Default button allows a user to customize the colors, fonts, etc used for their TopN Colorize view and to save those settings to
be used in each mTABWeb session.
Checking Colorize and clicking OK button colors the TopN Report as follows.
Again, the colors allow us to visually track responses from column to column. You will note that some cells are left uncolored and these would
be ones that did not fall in the set of most popular responses for that question that you asked to have colored.
With either method of coloring, the resulting spreadsheet or TopN Report can be exported to an Excel or HTML format and all of the cell formatting
will be maintained in the exported file.
