Designing reports

Reports enables you to run standard reports or to quickly customise your own reports.

In AO, the Report fields and formatting tab on the Change Report page enables you to produce plain multi-column reports. You can change fonts, font sizes, alignment, column width and column order.

In AE, there are two report designer options that you can use to customise your reports. Which one you select depends on the complexity of the report design.

• If you need only basic formatting, use the tools on the Report fields and formatting tab of the Change Report page.
  
  The Report fields and formatting tab contains the quicker and simpler tools, although it is limited in what it can do. Choose this method if you want only to produce plain multi-column reports. You can change fonts, font sizes, alignment, column width and column order. See Basic report formatting and editing.

• If you need advanced formatting use the tools in the Report Designer window.
  
  The Report Designer window enables you to edit each and every property of a field within a report; you can insert graphics and you can build mathematical calculations to meet your own specific needs. The functionality is almost unlimited in the Report Designer window. See Advanced report formatting and editing.

Designing new reports

When designing a new report, consider the following issues before starting:

• What data is to be included?

• How will data be grouped?

• How will data be totalled?

• Is portrait or landscape presentation the most appropriate?

• What headers and footers are required?

• What forced page breaks are required?

• Is a standard/particular look and feel required?

One of the most useful design features of Reports is the ability to quickly assemble fields into a template within the Change Report page and then use the Report fields and formatting tab to complete the design. In AE, you can also use the Report Designer window for advanced formatting.