Using the Toolbars

Before getting into the details of what each window does and how to use it, let’s first explore the toolbars and the buttons on each toolbar Each group of buttons has a different way of assisting you with writing formulas.

Displaying Windows

These buttons make minor modifications to the windows within the Formula Workshop. The first button toggles the categories and items to be either sorted or unsorted. Sorting the categories makes it easier to find an item in the tree. Clicking the button a second time returns them to their natural order.

The last three buttons hide one of the three other windows. The three windows that they hide are the Report Fields window, Functions window, and the Report Operators window. Clicking the button a second time displays the window again.

There are some other buttons that work with the windows, but they are scattered in different locations around the toolbars. The Workshop Tree button toggles the display of the Workshop Tree window along the left side. It is located above the other three buttons.

The Show Formatting Formulas button toggles the display of formatted report objects within the Workshop Tree. This makes it easy to see which report objects have conditional formatting. For example, when you initially open the Formula Workshop and look in the Workshop Tree, under the Formatting Formulas node is a list of every report section. Clicking on each section expands that node and shows every report object in that section. The objects that have conditional formatting can be expanded one more level to see those formulas.

Of course, not every report object has conditional formatting formulas associated with it. When you click the Show Formatting button, the report objects that don’t have any conditional formatting formulas are hidden. This makes it easy for you to look at the report sections and quickly see how much conditional formatting has been used and look at the details. If this is a report you haven’t worked on in a while (or a report that someone else created), then this button helps you quickly understand what is happening behind the scenes.

When clicking this button, all the windows except the Workshop Tree are removed and the Formula Expert appears in their place. It helps you create formulas based on a custom function. The Formula Expert is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6.