title: Using external style sheet in Birt
body: <p>I'm creating a simple external style sheet that I want to apply to my birt reports and am having problems from the style sheet elements not being loaded in the report or even when the are loaded if I try to render as a PDF or an HTML page the styles I defined are no longer applied. Below is my example style sheet.</p>
  
  <pre><code>.report-label
  {
      color: #365F91;
      font-weight: bold;
      font-size: 14pt;
      text-align: left;
  }
  
  .report-data
  {
      color: #000000;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I try to apply this as a style by going to the rptdesign outline. Right clicking "Styles" and selecting "Use CSS File..." Once the Style sheet is loaded I go to the report element I want the style applied to and in the General Tab there is a style section with a dropdown menu where I can select the style to apply. For example I might select ".report-label" and in the Layout of the report it looks like the style is applied. However when I run it as PDF or HTML the style is no longer applied. </p>
  
  <p>Also at times as I'm making changes to the CSS sheet I reload what I've done and all the items in the CSS file disappear and I can no longer access them to even apply a style.
  If I take the exact code though and copy it to a new file then use that css file instead then I can access them again. Any advice on how to get this working properly so that everything is still there when I generate a PDF and HTML report would be greatly appreciated</p>