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A Line Around Your Report

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In this short blog I want to show you how you can make a line around the output of your Visual Report Writer report. Visual Report Writer does not have a box - or a line - object that can go over multiple sections. The development team has granted to need for such a feature and will implement this via a page layer. In general: objects should not go over sections.

A Fake Box
What is a box? A box is a rectangle consisting of two horizontal and two vertical lines. This means it is possible to start the top of the box in the page header with two vertical lines parts and the top horizontal line part. In the page footer the bottom horizontal line and two bottom vertical lines can be created. In each of the sections between page header and footer you can create the vertical lines (left and right).

If you place vertical lines in sections that can extend in height because of the content (text object with variable height or sub-report) you can - since version 1.5 - select the variabele height checkbox for these lines as well. The amount of height extension for the variable height objects will then also be used to extend the lines.

If the body section and - if you use groups - does not reach the page footer you can create a filler section. Draw the vertical line in there and your report extends. The "Filler Sections" report in the enclosed zip file shows how to make use of filler sections and line elements.

We recognize this is a lot of work to create a box around your page and the page layer that is in the planning will be a much easier solution.

Unsupported Trick...
It is possible to make a box in a section - for example the page header section - and via field properties enter a height that covers the whole print area. The box will be shown at design time covering the whole report design area. Create this box at the end of your report design as the Visual Report Writer designer will want to extend your section (e.g. page header section) in height to accomodate te space for the box. Creating a box this way is not the correct solution and while it work up to version 2.1 it might not work in the future and page layers is a much better solution. The report "CustomerList Boxed" shows how I used this trick.
Attached Thumbnails Attached Files

Comments

  1. Michael Mullan's Avatar
    Did the page layer for boxes make it in to 3.0?