Report Options

The Options page in the Reports Explorer lets you specify some report options. Note: this page may not be available for some reports.

The options in this step are:

• Use same options next time report is run: if this option is turned on, all options specified in this page except Report Date, Start Page, and End Page are used as the defaults the next time the report is selected.

• Header: text that appears at the top of every page. If you want to use an expression rather than fixed text, such as a user-defined function, precede the expression with an equals sign (=). Here's an example of an expression that displays "Sales for <spelled out month> <year>" (such as "Sales for December 2001") in the report header:

  = 'Sales for ' + cmonth(date()) + ' ' + transform(year(date()))

  You must be familiar with dBase or FoxPro to use expressions.

• Footer: text that appears at the bottom of every page. As with the header, you can use an expression for the report footer.

• Include filter in report header: if this option is turned on, any filter you've set for the report displays in the header of the report.

• Include database in header: turn this option on to include the database name in the header of the report.

• Summary report: if this item is turned on, the report does not print detail information but only grouped and totaled fields. This option is disabled unless there's at least one group in the report.

• Orientation: the default choice, "Automatic," means that if the report is too wide to fit in portrait orientation, it automatically switches to landscape. However, you can override this by choosing either "Portrait" or "Landscape" to force the report to be printed in the desired orientation.

• Left margin: how many characters to indent the entire report; this is handy if, for example, you want to print a report and punch holes in it so it can be inserted into a binder.

• Report date: the date to put on the report. The default is the current date, but entering a different date might be useful, for example, to backdate reports to the end of the previous month.

• Start page: the first page to print. The default is 1 (start from the first page), but you can enter a higher number to start from another page.

• End page: the last page to print. The default is 9,999 (print to the last page in the report), but you can enter a smaller number to end at another page.