Creating new reports

To create a new report from scratch, follow these steps:

  1. You first need to go into Database Manager.

  2. Right-click your mouse and select New, followed by Report. The "Create Report Wizard" dialog is opened.

  3. On the first page of the dialog you choose the type of the report, from these options:

(see Types of report for more information)

The following steps assume you have selected either Fields arranged across report or Fields arranged down report (since Labels works slightly differently, see Labels in reports).

  1. Click on Next to go to the next page of the dialog.

  2. On this page you choose a database object on which to base the report. Select one of the following:

Selecting Tables, say, will cause all the tables in the current database to be displayed in the box. Click on one of the tables (or queries or relations) to select it as the database object, and then click on Next to go to the next page.

  1. On this page you choose the fields whose data you want to be displayed in the main body of the report, that is in the Detail section. Click on these one by one and use the Add button to transfer them from the Available Fields box to the Selected Fields box. Remember that you can determine the order of the fields at this point. If you make a mistake just use the Remove buttons and start again. Go to the next page.

  2. On this page you choose the way the report is to be grouped. Since you can have groups determined by the values of one field, and groups within these groups determined by the values of another field, it is important to order the fields correctly. Therefore make sure that the field which determines the primary group comes first, the field which determines the secondary group comes second, and so on. To select the fields for the groups, click on these one by one in the Available Fields box and use the Add button to transfer them to the Selected Fields box. If you make a mistake use the Remove buttons and start again. You can select up to three group fields. See Sorting and grouping in a report for more information.

Note: Groups automatically have a sort order applied to them. By default this is ascending for each group field (hence the "ASC" appended to each field in Available Fields), although you can change this when you edit a report.

  1. On the last page, you choose the fields for which you want to calculate summary values:

Count (counts the number of records)

Sum (calculates the total for the values in a numeric field)

Avg (calculates the average of the values in a numeric field)

Min (finds the smallest of the values in a numeric field)

Max (finds the largest of the values in a numeric field).

Note that the type of summary available depends on the data type of the field. So for a character field, for instance, the only summary option is to count the number of records, and for a numeric field all the summary options are applicable. By default, the first character field has its Count option switched on, and all numeric fields have their Sum option switched on. You can change these and also select extra summary types for a particular field.

  1. Once you have chosen the layout, associated table, report fields, group fields and summary options for your report, click on Finish to close the dialog.

The new report, based on the database object you chose, is displayed. The selected fields are displayed in the Detail section and the selected group fields are displayed in the Group Header sections. The Group Footers and the Report Footer all display the summary fields and types of summary you chose.

Whether labels and/or page headers are also displayed depends on the type of the report. See the following sections for more details:

Type of report: vertical fields

Type of report: horizontal fields

Labels in reports

At any time you can switch to Print Preview image\preview.gif to check what the report will look like.

The new report can be saved and named. Select the Save Report command from the File menu and enter a name for the report. Alternatively, if you close the report you will be asked whether you want to save it, and if so what name you want it to have.

The report will appear under Reports in Database Manager and can be opened directly from here in future.

See Editing reports for information on how to edit your report.