I have all the settings right to generate pictures using Atlas, but I can't access the 'Controlled by Atlas' checkmark in the print layout. It's greyed out, and whatever I try I'm unable to change this. I have a shapefile as layer, and an XLS file as Coverage layer. No background. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
QGIS Atlas – Atlas Control by Atlas Greyed Out
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I've just done this with 84 different raster layers. The method i used was:
- Create an atlas polygons layer with 84 features in it.
- Create a text field in the atlas polygons layer and write the names of all of the layers you want that atlas map to show, separated by the
|character. For examle: If you wanted to show three fields: "flood_results","Background_mapping" and "Vector_layer" then your field would contain this string:flood_results|Background_mapping|Vector_layer
Assign your atlas polygons in the Atlas Generation tab
In the print composer, the item properties for the map view window: there is a lock layers for map item checkbox with a data-defined override field option, make this field your text field with the layers in.
Now as you cycle through your atlas maps, the layers will change depending on the layers specified in the layers field of each atlas polygon.
You assume correctly, that you need to have one feature for each map in thecovrage file. based on your image I would advise you to create a polygon layer, with 5 polygons, which represents the individual areas of interest. This layer would be used as the coverage layer. You can hide this layer so it does not show on the map.
If you have a point layer for each region, you could go to processing -> QGIS geoalgorithms -> vector general tools -> Polygon from layer extent. With this tool, you would create your polygons, merge them into one file and use it as a coverage layer. With this approach, which can also be a batch process, you could create reproducible results
Best Answer
In your question you state that you have a XLS file as the coverage layer. I suspect that this means your coverage layer is a table only, without any geometry information.
A geometryless table CAN be used as an atlas coverage layer (e.g. to iterate over text in the rows), but it can't be used to automatically set a map item's extent (since there's no geometry information in that table to set the extent to!). You should still be able to use the data defined scale/x min/x max/etc settings to setup the map's view, if your table has information present which would allow you to derive these values.