How can I print a list of my items?

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Last Updated: May 17, 2023
Keywords: print, lists, pages, printing

You can print the current table view in Readerware by simply selecting File->Print->Report from the Readerware menu. But sometimes you will get a bunch of narrow columns, what is going on?

The print function will print out your collection in a table view in WYSIWYG fashion. Readerware prints the table view as displayed on your screen. If the title column takes up 20% of the screen, it takes up 20% of the page width. As the standard Table View consists of many columns, if you print it the report will consist of the same columns squished to fit on the page.

What you need to do is decide which columns you want to print and create a new view containing just those columns. You can create as many views as you want.

A simple report view is included with Readerware. It is called "Simple Report". Select the View->Select view->Simple Report menu item to display the current results in this view. You can see that it contains a few common columns that you will often want to include in a report. Select the File->Print->Report menu item to print this report.

Eventually you will want to create your own views for reports, it is a straightforward process. Try this:

• Select the Preferences menu item, then Views.
• Select the Table View in the View Maintenance list.
• Click on the Copy button, you will be prompted for a new name, enter say MyReport
• Your new view will appear in the list.

We have created a new view, it is a copy of the Table View, now we need to customize it so that it contains just the columns we want, in the order we want them.
 

• Still in Preferences, select Views, then Table
• In the Table View Maintenance list select your new view
• Click on the Red X to the right of the column list, all columns are removed from the view
• Keep it simple to start with, let's just print Title, Author and ISBN.
• In the right hand column double click on the these three column names so that they have a green check mark next to them instead of the red X. Double clicking on the column name toggles between the two.
• Click OK to return to the main window
• Select your new view from the view menu, select View->Select view->My Report.
• Only these three columns will display, size the columns as appropriate.
• Select the File->Print->Report menu item.

You can create as many different table views as you want, each with different columns. So you can create as many reports as you want.

The ability to create any number of views, each with different columns in any order is a powerful feature in Readerware.

Views are used for more than just reports. You can also use views with the export feature. If you need to create different TAB delimited or CSV files, define a view containing the columns you want to export and the order you want the columns exported in.

You can also create views to help you edit and organize your data. Say you want to price your books, you can create a "Pricing View" containing just relevant columns. Maybe title, author, format, condition and price.

There are a lot of reasons to define views in Readerware.