Step 1: Review Your Files
After you transition a project or classic file, review your new files to ensure everything looks as expected.
General
- Run a PDF comparison between your classic and next gen files. You can do this by exporting a PDF of both the classic and next gen file. Then, view each PDF side by side to look for differences. This is typically the fastest way to find and resolve any formatting issues.
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Review and update destination links in Spreadsheets. If you transitioned a Classic Workbook to a Spreadsheet, review and update any destination links that include text formatting.
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Check the names of your documents and sections to ensure they are updated with the desired names.
Review additional steps by specific file type and the solution you use:
Documents
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Dates may need to be formatted or adjusted. Look under Spreadsheets below for additional details.
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Paragraph spacing before and after may need to be reviewed or adjusted. To check for this, run a PDF comparison between your classic and next gen files. If you see persistent spacing issues, especially near tables, at the beginning or end of a section, or next to multi-column layouts, contact your CSM or Support for assistance.
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Headers and footers may display differently in next gen compared to classic in some circumstances. You may need to adjust odd/even options or margins to ensure spacing and that everything appears as you'd expect.
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Document names may need to be updated since the next gen Document is new, it will not have a “(1)” at the end of the name like the Classic Documents when it's copied.
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Section names have 100 character limit and the section name may be truncated during transition.
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Shared data validation lists become regular lists and may need to be recreated.
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Table titles are removed as next gen documents do not support table titles, but do support table header rows. The text in classic table titles is kept during transition and placed above the table in the document.
If you have a secondary table title, you can use the Title Suffix in table properties to enter text, such as "Continued". To learn more, see Set Table Properties.
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Table of contents need to be reviewed to ensure hyperlinking is applied correctly.
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Extra or blank pages may occur due to a mismatch in section margins. Check the margins on adjacent sections and adjust margins on one section to match other page margins. After this, the blank page should go away.
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Symbol alignment, such as an extra space before the percent sign, may appear differently in some cases in next gen Documents. This generally happens when Symbol Align is set to Right and Use parentheses for negatives are both checked under Formats. To resolve this, update Symbol Align to achieve the desired outcome.
Spreadsheets
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Formulas should be reviewed after transition to make sure they are correct. You can use Document Health as well as looking for #VALUE for any formula issues.
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Dates may need to be reformatted as dates are treated differently in Spreadsheets. In Spreadsheets, dates are treated as a serial date value, which allows you to do more math on dates in Spreadsheets.
Most dates should transition correctly, but it is best practice to review dates after transition to ensure they are formatted correctly and any calculations using them are still correct.
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Spreadsheet names may need to be updated since the next gen Spreadsheet is new, it will not have a “(1)” at the end of the name like the Classic Workbook when it's copied.
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Sheet names have 100 character limit and the section name may be truncated during transition.
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Shared data validation lists become regular lists and may need to be recreated.
Links
After you transition, you may encounter a few scenarios where links are broken. Review the scenarios below for steps to follow when you encounter broken links.
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Existing broken links: At times, when you transition a classic file, there may already be broken links. You'll typically see transition report code 326. In this scenario, double check your classic files for broken links. Fix your links in your classic files and then re-run your transition.
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Source file not transitioned: If a source file isn't included in the transition, it could break links in desination files. You'll typically see transition report code 300. As a best practice, start your transition from the Linked Files Report to ensure all linked files are included in the transition.
Charts
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Waterfall charts now store the total columns as a separate series and corresponding row in the chart table. If this 2nd series is turned into a waterfall the chart will position the columns on either side of the tick marks because it is expecting to have 2 sets of waterfall data now. To fix this, select the last column and change it back to a column series.
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Total labels in classic were a sum of the as-displayed values that represented each data point. In next gen, due to rounding, there may be times when adding up the display value of each data point won’t add up perfectly to the total label. If you’d like your data labels to visually foot to your total labels, we recommend using adjustment columns.
XBRL
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Review and update your XBRL profile, including the taxonomy, calendar, and company information. Be sure to update your fiscal calendar to reflect your new reporting dates. After you set up the fiscal calendar, select it in the XBRL profile for your document.
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Set default units and accuracies of your document. Each tagged number in a document requires a unit of measure. Using default units and accuracies, you can set units and accuracies that facts will use by default for an XBRL profile.
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Check your document outline. Disable XBRL from sections other than your financial statements and notes. You can disable XBRL at the section level to exclude it from XBRL generation and validation for the document.
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Go through your DEI section ensuring that all your dates are presented as 'Period' value format. All DEI date value Source links should also be formatted as Period. This sometimes requires the use of the =TEXT formula.
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Generate XBRL and clear all validation errors and warnings.
Step 2: Organize Your Files
After you transition your classic files, organize your new files to ensure your team uses the new files. To help with this you can:
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Create folders to organize your files and documents. Folders are the primary way of organizing all of your next gen files, such as Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations. To learn more, see Using Folders.
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Set a transition status on files to mark the transition as complete.
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Update permissions on the classic files to prevent people from working in old documents. A best practice is to set all permissions to Viewer.
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Rename your new documents to help direct your team to the correct files. For example, you can add "-OLD" or "-CLASSIC" to a filename to let your team know it's not the current version and should not be used.
Step 3: View and Open Files
View Files
Classic and next generation file types will co-exist and you can view both types in Home and Filles. You can tell the type of file based on the icon.
Classic Document
Classic Workbook
Classic Presentation
Document
Spreadsheet
Presentation
Open Files
You can continue to open and view both classic and next gen files until classic is disabled in a workspace. It is recommended that you request to disable classic if you no longer need to access or use your classic files. To learn more, see Getting Ready to Disable Classic.
Linking between Files
Review the table below to see which file types you can link between:
Source File |
Destination File |
Can Link |
Classic File |
Classic File |
Yes |
Classic File |
Next Gen File |
No |
Next Gen File |
Classic File |
Yes |
Next Gen File |
Next Gen File |
Yes |
Step 4: Learn and Use
The following resources are available to help introduce you and your team to the next generation of Workiva:
Additionally, you and your team can sign up for trainings to learn how to use the new document types in Learning Hub.