Report books enable you to print or export multiple reports in a batch.
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 View
mode. To save changes to a report book, click Save on the Standard toolbar.
Note: You can drag and drop report
books between book folders.
General tab
On the General tab,
you name the report book and specify whether to keep the layouts of the individual
reports or to use a global report layout.
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 to print them.
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 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.
Page Setup tab
The Page
Setup tab has options to specify the size, orientation and margins
of the reports.
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.