In the Modify Column dialog, various print options are available to modify a column in the View for reporting purposes including setting sort and group by columns, suppressing duplicates, blanking zero values in numeric columns, suppressing totals and setting page breaks.
Check the Sort Key Column checkbox to have Analyzer sort the records in the report according to the values in this column. If you specify more than one column as a sort key column, Analyzer sorts the columns in order from left to right.
Note: If the records are not already sorted, you must also check the Presort checkbox in the Report dialog. For more information see Designing Report Layouts.
Select either Sort Ascending (default) or Sort Descending to indicate the sort order.
When you are formatting a View as a report, you can specify the columns to group by. These columns act as report breaks as Analyzer will produce a subtotal each time the value of a specified Group By column changes, They only affect reports, not the way a View displays or prints.
Group By columns must be:
| | character fields |
| | the leftmost columns in the View (in order of precedence) |
| | sorted in order of precedence |
Note: If you havent explicitly sorted these Group By columns using the Sort command, you can have Analyzer sort them for you by checking the Presort checkbox in the Report dialog prior to generating the report. For more information see Designing Report Layouts.
To use the Group By bar in the View to set your Group By columns, do the following:
| 1. | Rearrange the order of the columns so that your Group By columns are adjacent to each other, in order precedence, from leftmost to right in the View. |
| 2. | Move the mouse pointer to the column heading area on top of the Group By bar, which is a thick vertical line located between the record number column and the first column in the View. |
| 3. | Drag the Group By bar to the right of the last column you want to include as Group By columns. If the Group By bar does not move as far to the right as you expect, this is probably because you are trying to include a non-character column. See STRING() for details on how to convert numeric data to characters for use as a key field. |
Note: When you drag the Group By bar to designate a column as a Group By column, the Sort Key Column checkbox is automatically checked.
Alternatively, you can set Group By columns by editing column properties using the Modify Columns dialog as follows:
| 1. | Drag the Group By columns to the far left of the View and arrange them in the order of precedence from leftmost to right. |
| 2. | Double-click the column header for the Group By column or right-click on column and select Modify Columns. |
| 3. | Analyzer opens the Modify Columns dialog. |
| 4. | In the Print Options section, check the Sort Key column checkbox and choose whether the column is (will be) sorted in ascending or descending order. For more information, see Sort Key Column. |
| 5. | In the Print Options section, check the Group By column checkbox |
| 6. | Click [OK] to close the Modify Column dialog. |
| 7. | Repeat steps 2 through 6 for each Group By column from left to right. |
The Suppress Duplicates option can only be invoked for columns designated as Group By columns. This option suppresses duplicate Group By column values.
By default, the values in the Group By columns are repeated for every related detail line. This makes the report busier and less clear to read. The report will be clearer when repeating Group By column values are suppressed (not repeated) for each detail line.
Check the page break checkbox to have Analyzer insert a page break each time a break column changes value.
You can suppress totals for numeric columns in reports. This is particularly useful for numeric columns that would normally not be totalled and whose total is meaningless.
You can suppress zero values in a numeric field to help you to quickly focus on the non-zero values with the Blank if Zero option.
Note: This option affects both the View and printed reports.