Specifying Main formatting options

The formatting fields contained within the Main section of a report provide the formatting instructions for the most common elements of a report including columns, form headings, footings, and breaks.

About this task

Some of the elements that you define in the Main section of the report can also be defined in other sections.

Table 1. Main section elements for a classic report
Element	Description
Total width of report columns	This property displays the total width of the tabular data in the report.
Column properties	In the table at the top of the page, you can specify which columns to display and set their properties. You can use the buttons above the table to add or remove columns, open Edit column dialog, and change the columns order. See Column properties for details.
Page	Use the Heading text and Footing text fields to specify the heading and footing of the page.
Final	Use the Text field to specify the final line text.
Breaks	Use the following elements to specify breaks properties: New page for break Check this check box to start a new page in the report when the current break level occurs. Footing text Use this field to specify the break footing text.
Outlining for break columns	Break columns are the columns with the Usage code set to Break. The report lines are grouped by the value in a break column. If you check this check box the value is displayed only in the first line of a group. Otherwise, the value is displayed in every line of a group.
Default break text (*)	Check this check box to set asterisk as the default break text. If there is no aggregation set for any of the columns, an asterisk is shown at the end of the break line.

Column properties

You can edit the column properties in the table or by using the Edit column dialog. Use the following fields to specify column properties.

Num:
Use this property to identify the column. This number is used to resolve form variables, and to determine how query result columns map to report columns.

Enumeration starts at 1. You can change the column number by moving it up or down in the columns list. For this, use the Move Up Column and the Move Down Column buttons.
Heading:
Use this field to specify the column heading, up to 40 characters in length. Use the underscore character ( _ ) to create a multiline heading. Leading underscores are ignored. For example, FIRST_SECOND is displayed as:
```
FIRST
SECOND
```
Usage or Usage code:
Use this field to assign a usage code to the column. Usage codes provide summary information about the data in a column. For example, usage codes can provide total summary information at the end of a column, or partial summaries at control breaks in a table. The usage codes available depend on the data in the column and the type of summary. From the drop down list of available usage codes, select the appropriate one. Refer to the online help system for more information on each usage code.
Indent:
Specify the number of blank spaces to the left of the column. The range is between 0 and 999.
Width:
Use this field to specify the width of the column. The number can be between 1 and 32,767. Make sure you allow enough width for currency symbols, the negative sign, and other special characters. If the column is too narrow for numeric data, it is replaced with asterisks. If the column is too narrow for character or date/time data, it is truncated based on the alignment specified. You can use a wrapping edit code to have the data wrap within the column width.
Edit:
Select an edit code to control how data is formatted in a report. Edit codes are available for character, date, graphic, numeric, time, timestamp data. Also, user-defined edit codes can be created.

From the drop down list of available edit codes, select the appropriate one. Refer to the online help for more information about edit codes.
Seq:
Use this field to specify the sequence of the columns in the report. If two columns have the same sequence number, they appear in the report in the column number order.
Note: The Seq field is ignored in reports that use the ACROSS usage code or if the Automatic reordering of report columns is selected on the Form Options window.