Making simple modifications to report objects

By virtue of Page Report Studio's powerful ad hoc functions, you can make simple modifications to report objects at runtime while viewing the report in Page Report Studio.

Note: Except for showing/hiding objects, a JReport Live license for JReport Server is required in order to use all the other features introduced in this article. If you do not have a Live license please contact your Jinfonet Software account manager to obtain a license.

Moving an object

A table, banded object, chart, crosstab, tabular, or image, can be easily moved to a new position. What you need to do is click anywhere in the object, then drag the icon appearing at its upper left corner to the destination. After Page Report Studio has finished processing, the object will be redrawn in the new location.

For other objects, select it and move it to the new position.

Notes:

Before you can move any object in a report, you need to first make sure that the Page Report Studio window is in the Interactive View mode.
For reports designed in JReport Designer, only the objects whose Position property value is absolute, and the DBFields or labels which have been defined as a cube element can be moved in Page Report Studio.

Resizing an object

To resize an object, click anywhere in the object, when the icon appears at its upper left corner, click the icon to select the object, then you will see that it is surrounded by a rectangle with three resizing handles. Point to a handle, when the mouse pointer turns to a double-headed arrow, you can drag the handle to resize the object.

To resize a panel in a banded object, select it and drag the resizing handle to the desired position.

To adjust the width/height of a column/row in a table, point to the right/lower boundary of the column/row, when the mouse pointer becomes a horizontal/vertical double-headed arrow, drag the handle and the width/height of the column/row will change. This will also resize all cells in the column or row.

For a crosstab, you can resize its rows and columns the same as you do with a table.

For a tabular, point to the boundary between two cells and the mouse pointer will become a double-headed arrow, you can then drag the boundary to adjust the size of the related cells.

To change the width and height of a field, click any value of this field to select it, then drag the right or lower resizing handle on its borders to a new position, and the width or height of the field will change. You can also do this for any label.

Notes:

When resizing table rows:
- If you resize the table header, only the height of the header will be changed. However, when you resize any row except the header, the height of all rows in the table will be changed at the same time.
- If there are some groups in a table and the height of one group row is changed, the other group rows will not be resized.
When resizing crosstab columns/rows:
- If you resize the horizontal/vertical header of a crosstab, other rows/columns will not be affected.
- If you resize the total column/row of a crosstab, other columns/rows will not be affected.

Hiding/showing an object

To hide a table, banded object, chart, crosstab, or tabular, click on the object, when the icon appears at its upper left corner, right-click on the icon and then select Hide from the shortcut menu. For other objects such as text boxes, drop-down lists, fields, and labels, right-click it and then select Hide to hide it.

To show a hidden object, right-click the object containing it, then on the shortcut menu, select the object name from the Show submenu.

Splitting and merging cells in a tabular

Adjacent cells in a tabular which can form a rectangle may be merged into one cell.

To merge adjacent cells, select them one by one while holding the Ctrl key, then click Menu > Report > Merge, and these cells will be merged into one cell.

To split a cell:

Select the cell and click Menu > Report > Split.
In the Split dialog, specify the number of rows and columns.
Click OK and the cell will be split.

Modifying object properties

Page Report Studio allows you to modify object properties with the corresponding properties dialog.

To format the properties of any object in a report, right-click on the object and select Properties from the shortcut menu. If it is a table, crosstab, chart, banded object, or tabular, click anywhere on it, when the icon appears at its upper left corner, right-click on the icon and click Properties on the shortcut menu. In the corresponding properties dialog, specify the settings as required. For a table, you can also right-click any field or cell in it and select Table from the shortcut menu to show the Table Properties dialog.
You can right-click a group header/footer panel in a banded object, and then select Group to show the Group Properties dialog in order to define the group properties.
If you want to format the properties of the report, right-click the blank part of the report, select Report from the shortcut menu, then in the Report Properties dialog, configure the properties as required.
To set up report page properties, click Menu > File > Page Setup, then in the Page Properties dialog, specify the settings according to your requirements.

Tip: If you just want to modify the text related properties for a field or label, for example, you want to change the text alignment or make the text bold, you can achieve it by simply selecting the field or label, then clicking the corresponding buttons on the toolbar.

For detailed explanation about options in the properties dialogs, refer to the specific topics in Page Report Studio dialogs.

Deleting an object

An object can be removed from the report if it is no longer required. However, objects that are in a subreport cannot be deleted.

To delete a table, banded object, chart, crosstab, tabular, or image, click on the object, when the icon appears at its upper left corner, right-click on the icon and select Delete from the shortcut menu, or you can drag the icon outside the report page. Then, a message box will prompt, asking for your confirmation. Click OK in the message box so as to remove the component.
For a field, you can drag any value of the field outside the report page to remove it. You can also drag any label outside the report page to remove it. Right-clicking and then selecting Delete is another way to achieve this.