Flexible Banners and Grouping

The default mode of Analysis & Reporting’s Cross Table tool has the same banner/cross-break/column variable set for all of the row variables that the user drags in. The Flexible Banners mode offers users the ability to treat the row/column set-up in Analysis & Reporting’s Cross Table tool as individual tables so that the row and column variables can be as unique as the user requires.

Before you start…

In addition to allowing users to save Sessions for general use, Analysis & Reporting saves whatever a user does locally. Therefore, if you’ve used A&R on a project’s data file(s) previously, before you access Flexible Banners, we recommend that when you open A&R you do the following Sessions > Reset. 

Resetting the session will prevent and glitches from what’s been stored locally on your machine. It is equivalent to clearing your cache when your browser does not reflect updates/changes.

How to access and enable Flexible Banners

To switch “on” Flexible Banners, go to: Analysis & Reporting > Cross Table> Options> Table Display > Toggle on Flexible Banners > Set options

Note: Before you set the options, it will A&R will warn you that enabling Flexible Banners means that it will clear any column variables that you may have dragged into the Cross Table interface.

Once set, Cross Table will flag that you are in Flexible Banners mode. This message will remain as long as you use it. 

In this mode, Cross Table will allow you to have independent row and column variables. For example, you may need copies of the same row variable(s), but require a different banner on each:

Q1 as the row variable and dCountry as the column variable:

Followed by: Q1 as the row variable and Q2 as the column variable:

Once enabled, you can carry-on using the features within Cross Table as you normally would and you can add tables to Reports and/or Export them to Excel and they will appear as they’ve been set-up.

Reports display example:

Export display example:

Grouping Overview:

Within Flexible Banners, users may wish to create groups. In A&R Cross Table, a “group” is defined as one or more variables that share the same banners/cross breaks.

This enables users to create loops that have the same down break, but different banners/cross breaks and/or to group a number of questions where the user wants the banners/cross breaks to be consistent for all down break variables in that group. In addition, because grouping is a feature enabled from within Flexible Banner mode, users can have down break variables outside of their group(s) that have completely different banners/cross breaks.

Enabling Grouping:

To enable Grouping, follow the steps for switching on Flexible Banners mode. Once in Flexible Banner mode…

Step 1: Add all of the questions you want to group to the down break. 

Step 2: Then select them in your down break…

Step 3: Click on Actions > Group selected questions

Your selected questions are now grouped.

Additionally, users can:

1. Edit all variables in the Group at once or select specific variables within the Group for editing
2. Export tables into Word, Excel, or PowerPoint
   1. Tables will appear in these tools as specified by the user and any template that the user applies when exporting.
3. Add the Group to a Report
4. Apply Actions, Hierarchies, and Options at a Group level 
5. Ungroup variables via the Actions menu
   1. To add or remove variables from a Group, users must first ungroup, make the changes, and then regroup.