The report designer program used by this software is called ReportBuilder™. It is a standard banded report designer. This means that the page for the report results is divided into sections, or bands. Each band can contain different fields, calculations, labels, or graphics.
Each report you create will have at the least a Title band, a Header band, a Detail Band, a Footer band, and a Summary band.
The Title band will usually contain a Label that is the title of the report, and maybe a [Criteria] label to show the criteria entered when a report was run.
The Header band will contain information that will be repeated at the top of each page of the report, just as a header in a Word document, and will usually be labels for the columns of fields that are in the Detail band.
The Detail band will contain different DBText and DBMemo controls that are the fields from the dataset used for the report. For example, for an Invoice List report, there will be a DBText control that is set to show the Order or Invoice Number, another for the date for the invoice, another that is the bill to company and contact name, another that is the total for the invoice, another that shows the tax amount, and another that shows the balance. This Detail band will be repeated throughout the report for each invoice record included that matches the criteria you set when you ran the report.
The Footer band will be at the bottom of each page of the report, and usually shows things like the number of pages and maybe the current system date and time.
The Summary band will be at the bottom of the detail records on the last page of the report and is for including DBCalc controls that total or otherwise summarize the detail records included in the report.
If you to Group data for the report, then you will also have a Group Header band and a Group Footer band. At the start of records in a group, the Group Header is displayed and at the end of the records that are in that group, the Group Footer band is displayed. The Group Header band usually will have a DBText control for the field you are grouping by and then whatever Label controls that may be appropriate for the fields in the detail band for the group. The Group Footer band, like the report Footer band, will usually have some DBCalc controls for giving totals of records in that group.
Adding a New Field Control to a Report Design
Usually a new field will be a new DBText control that you add to the Detail band of the report. So first you may need to make room for the new field somewhere in the detail band by removing, resizing, or just moving one or more of the controls that are there already. When you have a place to put your field, click the DBText control on the toolbar at the top of the ReportBuilder screen (it is the button with an A on it with a small box or grid behind the A - hint will show "DBText" when you move the mouse over it).
Then click on the spot in the Detail band where you want the field to be. Now at the top of the screen right under the toolbar will be a drop-down box that says "User Report Data", and to the right of it, and empty drop-down box. It is from this empty drop-down box that you will choose the field you want to show.
You will also probably want to right-click on your new DBText control there and choose Display Format to set the format for how the data is to be displayed. Also be aware that you can align the data in the DBText box and change the font and size for it with the controls at the top.
One other thing to be aware of when adding a new field is that if the field is a Memo field (comments or notes), you will need to use the DBMemo control instead of the DBText control.
If you want to add a new summary field (for totaling or counting records) to one of the footer bands of the report, you will need to use the DBCalc control instead of the DBText control, and put it in whichever Footer section you wish. You set the field that is being summarized in the same way you set a field to be shown in a DBText (in the drop-down for that at the top), but you also have to specify which calculation to perform by right-clicking on the field and choosing Calculations, and in the Calc Type box choose either Sum (add together all of the fields to get a total - most common), Count (how many times did this field occur), Average (what is the average value for this field), Minimum, or Maximum.
To change one of the fields shown in the report, you can click on the control in the report and then just choose a different field in the drop-down box at the top. If you need to add a new Label to the report (text that just shows on the report all the time), you will use the Label control from the toolbar at the top.
Adding or Changing Groups on a Report
When you create a new report using the New Report Wizard, you will be asked if you want to group by any field. If you have a report that already exists that was not grouped, but you want to add a group, you can do that in the ReportBuilder screen as well.
From the Report pull-down menu in the ReportBuilder screen, choose Groups. From the Groups drop-down list on this screen, choose the field you want to group by and click the Add button. Under the On Group Change options, you can choose to Start a New Page and/or Reset the page number when a new group member is started. You can also choose to Keep the Group together which means that it will try to move to the top of the next page instead of starting a group at the bottom of a page, and you can choose to Reprint group headers when it does start a new page within a group (recommended). When you click OK, the new Group Header and Group Footer bands will be added.
IMPORTANT: For grouping to work properly, the data must be first sorted by the field you are grouping on, so on the Criteria screen for the report, on the Sorting tab, be sure you put the field you are grouping by as the first field the data is sorted by in the list on the right. See above on Adding a New Field Control to a Report Design to see how you will add the DBCalc controls for putting summary fields in the Group Footer band.
Adding a Chart to a Report
You can add a chart to a report by clicking the DBChart control at the top, and then clicking on the report where you want the chart to appear. Then to setup the chart, right-click on it and choose Edit Chart.
You must first add a Series to the chart, which will define what type of chart it is; so on the Chart > Series tab, click the Add button and select the type of chart you want, and click OK. Then click the Series tab at the top next to chart, and go to the Data Source tab. You will want the type of Data Source to be DataSet, and then in the DataSet name box, choose "dpData". Then you can choose which fields from the dataset you want to show on the chart. This may take some understanding of how charts work that cannot all be explained here. Refer to the TeeChart help for more information.
Saving the Report
Instead of choosing File > Save or File > Save As from the pull-down menu, you will always just close the report designer with the X at the upper right corner and then say "Yes" you want to save your changes to the report. By choosing File > Save or File > Save As, you risk overwriting one of the other reports in the database and causing a problem that could be hard to fix.
Making the Results from a Report Export to a Text File
You can make the data from a report export to a tab or comma-delimited text file by choosing Print To File Setup from the File pull-down menu. This will mean that whenever you run this report, it puts the data into a text file that you may use to send your data to some other program for further processing.
On this Print to File Setup screen, you will choose the file name for the data to go to, the type for the file (can be Tab delimited, Comma delimited, or Fixed length - Tab delimited is the most common), and then you choose which controls will be outputted and in what order. Usually you will select the Header band and choose the labels for the first row of data in the file, then the Detail band and the field controls for all the matching rows of data that will be in the file.
When you save the report, it saves this Print To File Setup information as well. Now when you choose to print the report, you can still output the report to a printer, but you will also have a Print to File option and when you choose it, it will create the file as you have specified. This is probably the best method to use when you want to make some sort of connection between the data in this program and some other program (like Peachtree).
For more information on datasets, look in the help index in the software for "datasets".
ReportBuilder™ is a program made by a company named Digital Metaphors™. You can visit their website at http://www.digital-metaphors.com for more information on that product.
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