Overview of adding and editing reports

Reporting : Native reporting system : How to edit or add a report : Overview of adding and editing reports

A complete set of pre-written reports that you can run without editing are provided with the product. By default, when you open the Report Generator from the main menu, you will see a set of reports that are part of the Report Definition file, REPORTS.RPT.

Add Report dialog

This dialog lets you add a new report to the Report Definition file currently opened. You must provide a name for your report, and select the criteria you want to report on.

Opening the Add Report dialog

Starting at the Reports dialog with or without a list of reports displayed:

▪To open the Add Report dialog, click Add.

Edit <report name> dialog

This dialog lets you modify an existing report. You can also use the Duplicate button (see below) to make a copy of an existing report.

Duplicate button

The Duplicate button takes the highlighted report, and copies it, adding a “.1” on the end of the name. This is very handy for experimenting with a report while saving the original.

If the Duplicate button is pressed more than once, the report will be copied with a ".1, .2, ... .n.

Opening the Edit <report name> dialog

You can accept the default Report Editor or you can specify a different one using either the Edit Report or Text Edit Report option under the Reports dialog Report menu.

Note Any report can be edited using the Text Editor, even if the report content does not mandate its use.

Selecting a report editor

Starting at the Reports dialog with a list of reports displayed:

1 Select a report from the list.

2 Click Edit.

3 If a warning dialog displays (see Use Text Editor dialog), click Use Text Editor.

Note If you prefer to use a third-party text editor such as Microsoft Notepad or Microsoft Wordpad, open the report definition (.RPT) file you want to edit in that application.