Formatting Sections
Report sections have many formatting options. You can hide a section, force it to print at the bottom of the page, force a page break afterwards and many other options. Creative use of these formatting options gives you control over how the report looks.
The Section Expert dialog box controls the formatting of each section. As shown in Figure 8-1, it lists each section on the left-hand side and the formatting properties on the right-hand side.
Figure 8-1. The Section Expert dialog box.
The section expert is accessed three different ways. The first way is to select the menu items Report > Section Expert. The second way is to right-click anywhere on the report and select Section Expert from the pop-up menu. The final way is by clicking the Section Expert button on the Expert Tools toolbar. The Section Expert button is shown in Figure 8-2.
Figure 8-2. Section Expert button.
The Section Expert, shown in Figure 8-1, lists every section in the report and the formatting options available. The formatting options are represented by checkboxes because they are either enabled or disabled. Beside each option is a Formula Workshop button that uses conditional formatting to set the property value based upon a formula. This gives you flexibility for setting when a formatting option is turned on because the formula can use data from the record currently being printed. Every time a section is printed, the formula is evaluated and it’s result determines whether the formatting option should be applied. This was described in more detail in Chapter 5.
When selecting the section from the list on the left, the formatting options on the right change depending upon which section was selected. The applicable properties are enabled and the other properties are grayed out. The list of formatting options doesn’t change (for the most part), but you are prevented from choosing the ones that don’t apply. Table 8-1 lists the different formatting options for sections.
Table 8-1. The formatting options for sections.
| Formatting Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Free-Form Placement | Allows you to place report objects anywhere in the section without being confined to the positioning of the grid lines. |
| Hide (Drill-Down OK) | Doesn’t show the section, but allows the user to drill-down into the data. |
| Suppress (No Drill-Down) | Doesn’t show the section. Drill-down is not allowed. |
| Print at Bottom of Page | Force the section to always print at the bottom of the page. |
| New Page Before | Force a page break before the section prints. |
| New Page After | Force a page break after the section prints. |
| Reset Page Number After | Reset the page number counter back to 1 after the section prints. |
| Keep Together | Keep the section together on the same page. |
| Suppress Blank Section | If there is no data in the section, do not print it. |
| Underlay Following Sections | Print the current section on top of the following sections. Proper alignment is critical so that objects don’t overlap each other. |
| Format With Multiple Columns | Creates mailing labels and newspaper column style reports. This is only listed for the Details section. |
| Read-Only | Locks the positioning and formatting of all report objects in that section. You can’t move the objects or modify their properties. |
| Relative Positions | Sets objects within a section to keep their horizontal position relative to a grid object. If the grid object grows to the right, the other objects will shift accordingly. Primarily used with Cross-Tab reports. |
| Reserve Minimum Page Footer | Maximizes the amount of space available for printing report details by minimizing the amount of space reserved for the Page Footer. |
