Knowledge Base

(for Camelot version 3.x and newer only)

For any report, you can setup a very specific layout for the report so that it prints the report to a file instead of your printer or screen.

To do this, first create a new report that includes the fields you want in the file in the order you want as follows:

1. On the Reports screen, click the New Report button at the bottom left.
 
2. On the first screen of the new report wizard, enter first a name for the new report (like "My Contact List for Exporting")

3. Under the report name, choose the report category folder for the new report, in this case usually it would be "Client/Contact Lists"

4. Under the report category, choose the dataset for the report, which should be in this case "Contact List", and click the Next button.
 
5. Now select the fields you want to include from your contact's information in the order you want them.  Typical fields to select here would be: FirstName-BillingContact, LastName-BillingContact, Title-BillingContact, Address-Billing, City-BillingAddress, State-BillingAddress, Zip-BillingAddress, Last Done Order Date, Email
 
6. Once you've selected all the fields you want to include in the order you want them, click Next, and since you don't need to create any groupings, just click Finish.

7. Now highlight this new report you've created in your report list, and click Layout/Design at the bottom.

8. In the ReportBuilder program, from the File pull-down menu at the top, choose Print to File Setup.

9. On the Print to File Setup screen, choose the File Type you want (usually either Tab Delimited or Comma Delimited)

10. Under Bands, select the Header band, and then select each of the available label controls listed there EXCEPT for Label1 (that is the title of the report, and you don't need that).  Select each of the other labels listed there, starting with Label2, and do it in numerical order, not alphabetical (i.e., Label10 will come after Label9) and press the single right arrow button there to move the label to the list on the right.  Again, do this in numerical, not alphabetical order so that the list on the right has Label9 before Label10.

11.  Once you've selected all the Label fields, then select the Detail band under Bands, and do the same for all the DBText fields - again, numerical order not alphabetical.

12. The click OK on the Print to File Setup screen, and close the ReportBuilder with the X at the upper right, and say Yes to save changes.

13. You can now double-click on this new report you've created and set the criteria to be who you want to include in the list.  For example, for a list of all clients who've had work done in the past 3 years that you have an email address for, the criteria would be:

Client? is Yes (True)
AND No Mail? is No (False)
AND Email contains @
AND Last Done Order Date is on or after 36 months ago

14. After setting the criteria to be who you want to include, just click OK.

15. Now to create your file based on the print to file setup you've created for the report, just preview the report, and then when you click the little printer button at the upper left corner of the preview screen, on the Print dialog screen, there is now a Print to File checkbox, where you can check that box, choose Text File, and then set the location where you want to name and save the file and click OK, and it does it.

This is useful if you want to use a marketing funnel to create a file containing a list of the clients you want to send that mailout to, so you can then send that file to a mailing house or email marketing company.  So in this way, you create the mailout just like you would any mail merge report, it's just that when you go to print it, you choose Print to File instead.