IBM Cognos User Manual page 335

Exclude
The Exclude action eliminates categories and their descendants. The Cognos
Transformer diagram shows categories and hides their descendants. Report users
can drill down only to the parent of the excluded category.
You can apply the Exclude action at the dimension level of the category viewer, in
a dimension view, and in a custom view.
Use caution when excluding categories from a dimension that contains alternate
drill-down paths. If you exclude categories from one drill-down path, the data is
excluded from all such paths.
Cloak
The Cloak action eliminates categories and their descendants, but rolls up
their values for representation in the parent category. The Cognos Transformer
diagram shows categories and hides their descendants. Report users can drill
down only to the parent of the cloaked category.
You can apply the Cloak action in a dimension view and a custom view. You can
remove an alternate drill-down path from a cube by cloaking the associated drill
category.
You cannot cloak special categories or categories in a convergence level of an
alternate drill-down path.
Suppress
The Suppress action eliminates categories, maintaining links from the parent
to the child categories. The Cognos Transformer diagram shows categories. Report
users bypass the suppressed category when they drill down.
You can apply the Suppress action at the dimension level of the category viewer
and in a dimension view, but not in a custom view.
You cannot suppress root categories. In dimensions with alternate drill-down
paths, the drill category in the primary drill-down path is suppressed by default.
However, you can reverse this suppression.
Apex
Selecting the category and then clicking the Apex toolbar button makes this
the highest-level category. The Cognos Transformer diagram suppresses all
ancestor categories and hides all siblings (and the ancestors of all siblings) of the
apexed category. Report users see only the apex category and its descendants.
You can apply the Apex action in a dimension view and a custom view.
You cannot use the apex function on a union with an alternate drill-down path and
you cannot apex special categories. In an apexed dimension, any special categories
that refer to regular visible categories become children of the apexed category. You
can reverse this action by reapplying apex to the root category.
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Appendix D. Reference