Creating the Report Layout 

Editing the Layout

 

The Report Designer Edit menu provides functions for editing the report layout. These functions (except for Clear Area) can be selected as buttons from the Report Designer toolbar:

Cut

Copy contents, format (font, color, alignment, etc.) and conditions associated with the selected cells, then clear the content of the selected cells and restore them to default format. Selected cells must be contiguous and must be in the same grouping of lines; i.e. selected cells may not cross a section header.

Copy

Copy contents, format (font, color, alignment, etc.) and conditions associated with the selected cells. Selected cells must be contiguous and must be in the same grouping of lines; i.e. selected cells may not cross a section header.

Paste

Paste cell contents, format and conditions beginning at the current cell location, and add lines/columns to the section if required to contain all the elements being copied. If pasted cells contain merged rows or columns, joins will be included only if they are self-contained and do not extend beyond the scope of the cells being pasted.

Cells that contain group functions can only be pasted into detail lines and group footers, where the function will be converted to the appropriate group level. They cannot be pasted into page or group headers or the page footer; a warning message will be displayed and the receiving cell left blank. Line heights will not be affected by the height of the pasted lines.

 

Note:
Cut/Copy/Paste features are internal only and do not use the Windows Clipboard.

When editing a conditional line with Cut/Copy/Paste, the line condition will be included only if the entire line is selected.

If a group function is used in defining the condition, the function will be adjusted if pasted into a different section or removed if the function is not valid (e.g. a group total pasted into a group header).

 

Clear Area

Clear all data from the highlighted cells. This function also resets the cell formatting to default settings. This differs from selecting cells and pressing Delete, which only clears the data.

Insert Line

Insert a line below the current line.

Delete Line

Delete the current line.

Insert Column

Insert a column to the right of the current column.

If the Inherit attributes from column on left when inserting a column designer option has been turned On, then when a column is inserted, the cell attributes (i.e. font, colors, alignment, word-wrap and borders) from the previous column (on the left) are inherited on a cell-by-cell basis. If column 1 is inserted or the option is not selected, then the column cells will be assigned default attributes.

Note:
If the cell to the left is a joined cell (see Join), the inherited attributes would be those of the cell if it were not joined and therefore may not match the attributes displayed when joined.

The Inherit attributes from column on left when inserting a column option is at the bottom of the main Report Designer panel and in the Designer Options window, which is accessed through the Options menu.

(The Inherit attributes from column on left when inserting a column option was added in PxPlus 2023.)

Delete Column

Delete the current column.

Find Text

Find the specified text value in the layout. Find Text will search data items, formulas and fixed text within the cells.

To facilitate editing, it is possible to select entire lines and columns for processing. Click on the row header area at the left of the Report Designer grid (where the ruler marks are located) to select all columns in a row up to the last column currently used in the report. This does not apply to Group section headlines.

To select an entire column (excluding section headers), click on the column header area at the top of the Report Designer grid. Section headers are highlighted if the first column is selected although they are not included.

Note:
Joined cells will be included only if the column/row being selected is the first column/row in the join.

To select all, click on the top left header cell. You can also right click on the header cells to select the row/column, as well as invoke a popup menu with applicable editing and formatting options.

Note:
Selecting multiple cells, such as entire lines and columns, is not currently supported in the iNomads environment.