Dear All, Following Bill Cook's suggestion about using a table and look-ups for "standard" text in reports I have just completed changing 4 reports.
Bill's idea works fine and is great for getting standard presentation - change the data in the table and, of course, every report that uses it gets changed without having to go to the report designer. Thanks again, Bill - as I said, an obvious idea as soon as someone takes the blinkers off. And that, folks, is where the trouble really begins: I wanted to put 20 variables in the report header and another 20 in the report footer of a dozen reports. Sounds easy and it is - for the first one. Then it becomes an interminable bore: The report writer seems to insist on putting every variable in the data section. At least, I can find no way to fool it to a variable anywhere else. So the task becomes type in each and every variable look-up: "varname = colname in tablename where etc." I was a little bit lucky because I set my variables up to be based on line numbers so I could copy and paste and change two numbers for each variable: "varname1 = colname in tablename where colname1 = blah" - and change the number each time. An improvement but still a bore. Then I had to move 40 variables from the data section to the correct one - an easy way to get RSI - and that is NOT a joke. Again, I was lucky because RH and RF are the first and last items in the list that displays only 2 sections at a time. Click in the box and hit [End] at least speeded up the footers. Then place the 40 variables on the form - one by one. Each time the cursor in the variables selection box goes to the top of the list so I have to scroll down because typing the first letter of the variable name is all you can do - the second and subsequent letters are ignored. And, you guessed it, all my variables begin with the letter "v". I'd even chosen vFnnn and vHnnn with this in mind but it was a waste of a thought. And then, of course, there's the problem I've mentioned before: the snap-to dots "move" when you do something like [PageDown] or scroll so that anything close to a green border line is likely to jump into another section or the spacing is simply different. And, just to add insult to injury, R:Base crashes for no apparent reason and the rb4 file is corrupted and can you do anything about that? No you can't - except go back to a back up. So, should I give up amending reports and just create a template and then re-create all my reports? Do I persevere and work slowly through the remainder? Do I jump off a cliff? (Those are rhetorical questions - at least, the third one is for now!!) Does anybody have any idea of a way to take the report header and report footer of one report and stick them into other reports. I need to do only a half-dozen changes to each report if that were possible? Thank for any suggestions, Regards, Alastair. ================================================ TO SEE MESSAGE POSTING GUIDELINES: Send a plain text email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body, put just two words: INTRO rbase-l ================================================ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send a plain text email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body, put just two words: UNSUBSCRIBE rbase-l ================================================ TO SEARCH ARCHIVES: http://www.mail-archive.com/rbase-l%40sonetmail.com/
