Color-Coding Cells

A new feature for color-coding cells using eight pre-defined colors was introduced in BizInt Smart Charts for Patents 5.5 (April 2021) and BizInt Smart Charts Drug Development Suite 5.3.1 (May 2021).

If you want to add a color-code key to your Word or other report, here is a sample color-code key Excel file to get you started.

Step by Step

1. Select the cell (or group of cells) to color-code, then click on the down arrow next to the paint bucket icon on the toolbar to bring up the Color Cells panel to select your color. Or choose Text | Color cell on the menu to color the cell in the most recently selected color.
   
   
2. Selecting a cell and clicking on the Paint Bucket icon will color the cell in the currently selected color, shown in the rectangular below the paint bucket.
   
   
3. To remove the color-coding for a cell, select the cell and click on the white box with the blue "X", or choose Text | Clear cell color.
   
   
4. You can close the Color Cells panel, or drag it to another location on your screen.
5. You can choose "Text | Clear all cell colors" to remove all color-coding. Or, you can hide cell colors by unclicking the View | Enable Cell Colors option, then select it again to redisplay your cell colors.
   
   
6. Note that colors will look different when combined with grey row shading.

Note: if you "lose" your Color Cells panel, close the BizInt Smart Charts software, go to %appdata%\bizint, delete the scAll.ini file, and restart the software. This was fixed in December 2021.

Color Coded Cells in Updated Charts

When you update a chart and a row is replaced with a newer version, the contents of publisher cells will be replaced with content from the new record. Color coding of publisher cells will also be reset in this process.

If you want to use color coding in a chart that you are updating over time, it is best practice to use the color codes in a user-added column. Color codes in user-added columns are preserved.

You can take advantage of this by color coding cells in each chart in a user added column, but with different column titles, then combine the charts. The different user added columns will be preserved and allow you to see your markups from the different charts.

If you have color coding in both the old and new chart, the color coding from the newer record will be used.

Color Coded Cells in Reference Rows

In Reference Rows, the color of the selected cell will be used in the final export. Color coding in other cells is not considered.

The one exception is when all cells are blank - color coding will be considered as content when all else is equal.

In columns with Summarize rules, the resulting cells will not have color coding.

Updated January 2022