Reports

Readerware provides a built in reports facility. You have extensive control over the format of the report and the data selected for printing.

You can also define custom reports.

The printing menu items work with the table view so are only active when a table view is displayed.

Selecting the books to print

The Readerware reporting functions work together with the table views and search functions. You must select the view you want to print and run a search to establish the data you wish to print. Then when you select Print from the file menu or toolbar, the current results set is printed in the format displayed.

You can define custom views to print just the database columns you want and in the order you want. The point to emphasize here, is that views are not just for displaying data on the screen, they are also used to define reports. So name your new view, "Summary Report" or "Inventory Report", then just select the appropriate view and print.

Readerware uses the current view to determine which columns to print, the order to print the columns and the order to print the rows. It also uses the current view to determine how much space to allocate to each column when printing. Readerware normally fills the entire width of the page with your data, adjusting the column widths as necessary. It allocates the same proportion of the total width to each column.

Sometimes if you adjust the column width so that it just fits on the screen, it may be truncated when printing due to differences in printer and screen font sizes. You can fix this by selecting another font when printing, or adjusting the column width on the screen.

If your report contains too many columns, they will all be shrunk to fit on the page. So if your report contains a lot of very narrow columns with only a few characters of each column displayed, you are printing too many columns. The columns you select to print must fit on the page, reduce the number of columns so that they all fit.

To show or hide columns, right click on the column title to display the popup menu. You can hide the current column or show any previously hidden columns. The new column will be shown after the current column. So to show a column it is best to right click on the title of the column that you want to appear before the new column.

You can also move columns around, simply click on the column header and drag the column to its desired location.

To sort the search results on any column simply click on the column header to sort the search results in ascending sequence. Click again to toggle the sort sequence and display the search results in descending order.

The current view state is always saved when you exit Readerware or switch views so you never have to worry about saving your changes.

You can refine your searches as described in the Search functions section. You can for example search for all books by a particular author, then just hardcover and signed books. Then print these results.

To print the entire contents of your database, select one of the All data... formats from the toolbar. Then choose an author or title search and search for *, i.e. all items.

You can also print the contents of the Readerware Want List. To print your want list you must select Print from the want list window. Printing your want list can be very useful if you also buy from brick and mortar book stores.

Printing a report

The first thing you see when you select Print is the Report Setup dialog:

Using this dialog, you define the various printing options you want for this report, the font, orientation etc. All selections are saved and will be used the next time you select Print. The choices you can make are:

Font Selection - You can select a font, style and point size for the report. A sample of your selection is displayed.
Orientation - Portrait or Landscape. The Readerware reports with a large number of columns displayed will normally look better in Landscape mode.
Margins - The page margins are specified in inches, i.e. .5 will result in a half inch margin
Draw Table Grid - If checked Readerware will print the table grid.
Two sided - If checked Readerware will print on both sides of the paper. You should first print odd numbered pages 1, 3, 5 etc., reload the printed pages into the printer, and then print even numbered pages.
Break on Author - Readerware will exclude the author column from the table itself. The author will be printed on a separate row and then Readerware will print the books for that author in the table format. Try it!
Tables per Page - If you are printing a table with only a few columns you can adjust the slider to get Readerware to repeat the table across the page the specified number of times. For example if your view contains just author and title and you set the Tables Per Page to 3, Readerware will print a table with six columns, flowing the data from one group of columns to the next.
Add Titles - If checked the report title will be printed at the top of each page. The tittle will be centered.
Page Number - If checked Readerware will include the page number at the top of each page of the report, to the right.
Date - If checked Readerware will include the date at the top of each page of the report, to the left.

Once you have specified all your Readerware options, you can display the printer properties dialog if additional options are required.

Then hit the Print button to begin printing the report. A progress dialog will be displayed. You may cancel the report at any time.

If you selected the two sided option, you will see two print buttons, Print Odd and Print Even. These will print the odd and even numbered pages respectively. You may print them in either order. After printing one set, reload the printed pages in the printer and print the next set.

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