Lesson 1: Creating a Report


Let's create a report showing contact information from the Address Book application. First, click the New button. Choose Quick Report Wizard from the Report Types dialog and click OK. The New Quick Report Wizard appears. In Step 1, enter "Contacts By Company" for the report name. Enter any comments you wish about the report.

Click the Next button to go to Step 2. For Table, select "Company." Then, find "Company Name" in the Available Fields list, click it, and click the Add button (which looks like a right arrow) to add it to the Selected Fields list. Note that you can also add a field to the report by double-clicking the field name in the available fields list. Add the "Location" and "Primary Phone" fields from the available fields list as well.<p>Select "Person" in the Table list. Find each of the following fields in the Available Fields list, click it, and click the Add button: "Person Name," "Job Title," "Business Phone," "Business Fax," and "Email Address."

Let's see what the report looks like: click the Preview button (the following image shows a "zoomed out" version of the report, which you can set by changing the page magnification to 75%).

It's not a bad start, but let's format it so it looks like we expect. Close the preview window, and then select the "Company Name" field in the selected fields list, click the Properties button below the list, select the Grouping page, and turn on the Group on this field setting. Turning this option on will "group" all the records that belong to a particular Company together on the report. Additionally, turn on the Include all fields in same table in group header setting. This setting will move all the fields that come from the same table as "Company Name" up in to the group header.

Let's preview it again.

That's more like it. The listing is grouped by company name and is laid out as we expect.

To save this report for future use, click the Finish button. It will appear in the Reports Explorer list.