Displaying only Certain Tables and Fields

If your database has a lot of tables and fields, you may have a long list to choose from in step 2 of the report wizards, making it difficult to know which fields to select. To make matters worse, a lot of these fields may contain default or even no data; for example, the fields may be there to support certain features in the program, but you may not use those features.

To make things easier, run the Analyze Database function in the Tools menu. This function goes through your database, looking at all fields in all tables for fields containing meaningful data (that is, more than a single unique value), and marking those as "favorite." This may take some time to run, depending on the size of the database. For example, a database with 1000 tables and 35000 fields and tens of thousands of records took about two minutes to run.

After you've run this function, step 2 in the report wizards display a Show only favorites option. If you turn this on, the table and field lists show only those tables and fields marked as "favorites". Turn it off again to display all tables and fields.

You can run the Analyze Database function more than once. For example, if a new version of your program is available, it may add numerous tables and fields, so this function can update your favorites list.