You set the font, colors, alignment and borders of selected controls on the Home tab of the ribbon. This page describes what goes beyond that.
Format strings
A format string determines how a value appears: with how many decimal places, as a percentage, as a date. You open it in the smart tag under Format String or under Properties at Text Format String. The window offers presets in the groups General, Number, Currency, DateTime, Percent and Special with a preview; you type in formats of your own. If one is invalid, the window reports Input format string contains illegal symbol(s).
| Purpose | Format string | Example |
|---|---|---|
| whole number with thousands separator | {0:n0} |
12,480 |
| two decimal places | {0:n2} |
3.75 |
| percentage with one decimal place | {0:0.0 %} |
87.3 % |
| date | {0:dd.MM.yyyy} |
23.09.2026 |
| weekday and date | {0:dddd, dd.MM.yyyy} |
Wednesday, 23.09.2026 |
| month | {0:MMMM yyyy} |
September 2026 |
| time | {0:HH:mm} |
14:30 |
| text with value | Total: {0:n0} |
Total: 12,480 |
For GroupTime, the format matches the chosen time base: {0:HH:mm} for
hours, {0:dd.MM.yyyy} for days, {0:MMMM yyyy} for months.
Styles
A style combines font, colors, borders and alignment under one name. If you change the style, all controls that use it change.
- Style from a control: Design a control, select it and click Home › Styles › Extract Style.
- Assigning a style: Select controls and choose the style in the gallery of the Styles group, or drag it onto a control in the Report Explorer under Styles.
- Editing styles: The small button at the bottom right of the Styles group opens the list of all styles of the design.
- Alternating row colors: Under Properties, a control has two style settings for odd and even rows: Odd Style and Even Style.
Settings you make directly on the control take precedence over the style; Style Priority determines which values of the style still apply.
Colors by condition
The color, font and visibility of a control can depend on the data — for example, to give abandoned conversations a red background or to show a row only if the wait time is long:
- Select the control or the table row.
- Under Properties, click the “f” next to Background Color, Foreground Color or Visible.
- Enter an expression.
| Goal | Expression on | Expression |
|---|---|---|
| pink background for abandoned conversations | Background Color | Iif([IsAbandoned] = 1, Rgb(255, 199, 206), ?) |
| long wait times in red text | Foreground Color | Iif([TotalWaitDuration] > 60, Rgb(192, 0, 0), ?) |
| show only conversations with a wait time | Visible | [TotalWaitDuration] > 0 |
The question mark at the end keeps the usual color if the condition does not apply. Instead of individual colors, you can also create two styles and switch between them with an expression on Style Name.
Older designs use Formatting Rules for this. They are listed in the Report Explorer under Formatting Rules and still work; new conditions are easier to set up with expressions.