Report Designer

Tool Bar

The Report Designer tool bar provides convenient access to many of the functions that are also available as Menu Options. A list of tool bar options is provided below in their order of appearance.

Tool Bar Option

Description

New

Define a new report.

Open

Open an existing report file.

Save

Save the report definition. See Saving the Report Definition.

Report Wizard

Launches the Report Wizard for creating a new report.

Options

Launches Report Options.

Preview

Preview the report output. See Testing the Report.

Print

Send the report to the alternate output destination selected from the drop-down list: Clipboard, Custom Output, HTML document, PDF document, Printer, Tab delimited file, Viewer.

Cut

See Editing the Layout.

Copy

See Editing the Layout.

Paste

See Editing the Layout.

Find

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

Find Next

Find the next instance of the specified text value in the layout.

Insert Row

Insert a line below the current line.

Delete Row

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.

Join

Merge the highlighted cells. If the value in a cell spills into the next column, you should join the cells. For printed output, this may not always be necessary as the value will print outside of the cell area, but HTML output requires that such cells be joined to maintain proper column spacing. A common use of joined cells is to centre titles across several columns. Cells may be joined across columns and rows, but the rows must be in the same section.

In iNomads, where only one cell can be highlighted, the Join Cells window shown below is presented to specify the total number of columns and/or total number of rows, including the anchor cell, to be joined.

  

(The Join Cells window was added in PxPlus 2018.)
(The Join tool bar option was added in PxPlus 2021.)

Font

Set the Font and font attributes (i.e. style, point size, orientation).

Text

Select the Text Colour.

Background

Select the Background Colour.

Text Alignment

When an item is added to the layout, a text item will be Top Left justified and a numeric item will be Top Right justified.

Text alignment for selected items can be adjusted by clicking one of the horizontal alignment buttons (Left, Center, Right) and/or one of the vertical alignment buttons (Top, Middle, Bottom).

  
(Compound text alignment menu options were added in PxPlus 2019.)
(Horizontal/vertical alignment toolbar buttons were added in PxPlus 2020.)

Border width

Adjust the border width to Thin, Medium or Wide. The width must be set prior to adding the border.

Borders

Set preference for displaying Borders. Available selections are Full grid; Edges Only, Inside only, Left Edge; Right Edge, Top Edge, Bottom Edge, No Borders. All borders are black.

Set Line Condition

Launches the Define Filters dialogue for adding a condition to a line. See Conditional Lines.

Set Cell Condition

Launches the Define Filters dialogue for specifying the conditions under which an alternate cell definition will be used. See Alternate Cell Condition.

Switch Cell

Switch between two cell definitions if an alternate cell definition has been created. See Switch Cell Definition.