Report books enable you to print or export multiple reports in a batch. Report books
replace Folder Printing in versions of Application Studio prior to 10.3. The reports can be selected from multiple folders. A report book has
four tabs on which you specify the reports to print, their availability and their
layout: General, Reports, Page Layout, and Header and Footer.
A report book definition is displayed in the main report pane in Design View. To save
changes to a report book, click Save on the Standard toolbar.
Note: You can drag and drop report books between book folders.
Reports tab
The Reports tab has two sections, the Report list and the Report parameters section. In the Report
list section you specify which reports are included in the report book and the order
in which they will be printed.
In a report containing list objects, for example, combo boxes, you can display different
views of the data by selecting different elements from the lists. You could print
out all views. Or you could choose to print only the current view. In the Report Parameters
section, you specify which elements are selected from each report object. By default,
Automatic is selected. This prints a report in respect of the currently selected element
only.
Note: Select with care which views to print. You could choose to print a very large number
of reports. Even in a report with only two combo boxes, each of which contain four
years and four products respectively, there are 16 possible combinations of elements
- 16 views of the report to print.
The toolbar on the
Reports tab has Up and Down buttons to specify the order in which reports are printed. It
also has Left and Right buttons with which you can indent one report below another.
This can be used to form parent/child relationships between reports. For example,
a report book might contain several views of a summary report and several views of
a detail report. By default, all views of one report will print, or export, followed
by all the views of the other report. But often you would want each summary view to
be followed by the equivalent detail view. To achieve this, click the
Right button to indent the detail report in the Report List.
Note: Child reports created in this way do not inherit the parameter settings of the parent.
For example, if parent and child reports contain a list object of the same name and
you change the elements selection for the parent report, the element selection of
the child report does not change. You can pass the parameters from parent to child
by using input and output variables.
See input and output variables.
Header and Footer tab
The options of the Header and Footer tab let you apply headers and footers which are printed on each report and which
override any existing headers and footers. You can also apply global page numbering
to the printed reports.