Change "Mixed" Formatting

Hi Guys,

This is an interesting conversation, as it goes to the core of the early aesthetic challanges that some users initially have with Modano.

Jeffrey's comments re customizing the required modeling colors are correct, although I've always left them as 3 different colors as I like to know where everything is in the 'engine' of my models. I think a lot of people get carried away with aesthetics when they really should only be considered as a top priority in the presentation outputs...

Yury - the Modano style set is intentionally locked down because allowing users to create styles would make sharing modules very complicated. We could accomodate this, in a way similar to the way we allow module links to be created and shared independently of any specific module, but given that most users have never used styles properly in Excel we thought we'd walk before we run... So perhaps in a future version...

For all of these questions, there are easy workarounds that are never any worse than they are in unmanaged Excel (i.e. without Modano). Modano basically provides the customizable style set as a foundation only - i.e. any customizations you apply to cell blocks (e.g. bold formating, font color, number formatting, etc.) will be maintained in those cell blocks thereafter. So technically you don't even need to apply styles if you don't want to...

The benefit of applying styles rigourously, and limiting the overlaying of formats to cell blocks, is that users with different themes will be able to use the each other's modules without them looking different depending on who has built them. For example, we've been rigourous in limiting the application of formats to cell blocks after applying styles so that the Modano modules look very much 'in theme' regardless of your Modano options settings. Obviously if you're only building modules for yourself of your team, and you're all using the same theme that will never change, this is not much of an issue.

Personally, I do the following when there's no in-built Modano style that fits what I'm after:

1. Non-numerical assumptions: I use the Sub-Total style (Build tab, Styles & Formats group, Assumptions menu, Sub-Total). This style is an unprotected text style with no fill coloring by default, so you can add formats from scratch.
2. Numerical assumptions: I use the Cell Link style (Build tab, Styles & Formats group, Assumptions menu, Cell Link). This style is an unprotected numerical style with no fill coloring by default, so you can add formats from scratch.
3. Non-numerical non-assumptions: I use the Heading 4 style (Build tab, Styles & Formats group, Outputs menu, Heading 4). This style is an protected text style with no fill coloring by default, so you can add formats from scratch.
4. Numerical non-assumptions: I use the Number style (Build tab, Styles & Formats group, Outputs menu, Number). This style is an unprotected numerical style with no fill coloring by default, so you can add formats from scratch.

You can also use the presentation styles and customize them, but I generally avoid doing this outside of presentation module components.

Thanks for the feedback Yury, I agree that having the ability to add custom styles would be very powerful. I'll add it to our list of upgrade features. In the interim, you will have to satisfy yourself with adding formats after applying styles to distinguish your groups of inputs...

Re terminology, the use of 'Assumptions' and 'Outputs' is very much purpose-based, and while I can see your point about confusion from Assumptions/Outputs sheets, I think it's quite dangerous to use words like 'Input' and 'Calculation' too, as not every input is an assumption and not every output is a calculation! This is something I've always been very passionate about keeping specific... At the risk of getting way off topic, I'd be interested to see what you think about the definition of 'assumption' in the Standards:

www.ssrb.org/resources/standards/ce/sma1/assumption_classification

If you're really keen to open a can of worms, I'd recommend downloading and reading the full Best Practice Spreadsheet Modeling Standards (Commentary & Examples) from:

www.modano.com/content/libraries/modano/pdf_documents/bpm-standards-7.1

Modano is approach-agnostic, and over the years best practices / standards have been a divisive area, but I don't know many people who have taken the time to properly read the Standards and not been very comfortable with the infrastructure they provide... It does require a mindset change though, as standardisation by its very nature requires compromise.

Hi Yury,

Whenever I build a module that requires input from different user groups I normally put them on separate assumption sheets and specify in the heading who is responsible for populating the assumptions cells. If you had to have the assumption cells on the same sheet you could also have a dropdown box somewhere which specifies the user type (model owner or final user) and then use conditional formatting to grey out assumptions cells meant for the 'other' user group. I appreciate this is not exactly what you are after and that it probably creates more work than it might be worth but I understand why there is only one style for assumptions available in Modano.

With regards to lookup table having to be mirrored in each module this annoyed me in the beginning tool, but given that each module should be able to operate independent of any other module lookup tables needs to be module specific. The only workaround I know of is to add the lookup table in the time series module, but that could potentially lead to your model not being compatible with Modano library modules so you have to weigh up the pros and cos with that before you make any changes in that module.