The Columns Screen in the ReportWriter

Using controls on the two versions of the Columns screen you can determine:

• Which Column are 'hideen' and which are output in the Report
• The format of numbers, dates and Booleans when output.
• The alignment (left, center, right) of data in the column when output.
• The order of the columns in the output
• The column header ("Display As") text for all Columns.

The Two Versions of the Columns Screen

The Column screen has two versions:

• The "Data" version, which is the default and the version that you will work with most of the time.
• The "PDF Specific" version, which can be selected by the "Choose display" at the top of the screen which consists of fields specific to creating Adobe PDF output.

Data Version:

PDF Specific Version:

Data Controls

Controlling Column Headers

The "Display As" field contains the column headers for the output columns.  These are simply text fields and can be edited at will:

Hiding Data vs Deleting the Columns

Unless you are very experienced in the using the ReportWriter, fields added to reports by the ReportWriter itself, e.g. when joining tables, should not be removed.  The "Hidden" column of checkboxes allows you to specify which columns should be output and which should suppressed.  Many of the columns you will mark as "hidden" will actually have crucial functions within the ReportWriter itself.

To hide columns and not include them in any output, locate the "Hidden" column and check the checkboxes for the columns you wish to exclude from the output.  [If you are used to the Genesis SIS ReportWriter, this is the opposite of what you do there to hide columns].   

Controlling the order of the Columns

The order of the columns in the output is strictly controlled by the "Seq" (for 'sequence #') column.   Every time you save the screen, it is resorted by the numbers that appear in the "Seq" column:

To change the order of items, simply change the sequence numbers in the column so that, when sortednumerically, they are in your desired order.  

To resequence the numbers, use the "Re-sequence" button at the top of the "Seq" column.  This begins the sequence count with a "10" for the first item and increases by 10 for each subsequent item, as shown above.    You would need to do this if you have inserted a number of new columns between existing ones, and ended up with a mish mash of closely spaced numbers.   

Formatting Columns

Three types of columns can be formatted:  Boolean, numerics (whole numbers and decimals), and Dates and Timestamps.

The formatting for these includes:

Boolean:

Enter what you would like to see for true and false separated by a comma, or just the true value.

 Examples:

   Y,N will display Y for true and N for false.

   X will display X for true and nothing for false.

True,False will display True for true and False for false.

Up,Down

Numbers:

 Examples:

Dates and Times

 Examples:

There is actually a very extensive set of format characters for Dates and Timestamps.  This set includes (:

Alignment

There are 4 possible alignments: unset, left, center and right.   The drop down in the "Alignment" column can be used to select a desired alignment.  This is essentially for PDF output, even thought it appears on the "Data" version of the screen:

PDF Formatting Controls

The five columns unique to the PDF display of the screen include:

• Font - This allows you to select the Font for the column
• Font Size - This allows you to select the font size for the coloumn.  It defaults to a size of 9 (which is small).
• PDF Width %
• Style - This selector include "Normal", "Bold", "Italic" and "Bold and Italic".  It allows you to select special styling.
• Barcode - This is a checkbox you can ignore unless your font is a barcode font.  Checking the Barcode checkbox will then put the "start" and "stop" characters around the output barcode.