Miscellaneous Commands

The following section has the description of some miscellaneous commands of the Report/Presentation Designer.

You can change the relative order of elements in the design by using the Bring to Front or Send to Back commands. This may be useful when selecting one out of several overlapping elements. Bring To Front command makes the selected element last in the band so it will have preference over other overlapping elements. Send to Back command makes the selected element first in the band. To invoke these commands select them from the Actions menu of the Report Designer toolbar.

This command makes a conditional element out of the existing non-conditional element. The command creates a conditional element with the original element being the sub-element of the conditional element (initially without the conditions but you can add them later) - see Editing Conditional Element. The command may be useful if you want to attach conditions to the existing element, but you do not want to re-create the element as part of a conditional element. To invoke the command right click on the element you want to attach the conditions to and select the Attach Conditions from the pop-up menu.

Rulers may be helpful when determining coordinates and dimensions of elements in the design. It is possible to change measurements units of the rulers from points (each point is equal to 1/72 of an inch) to centimetres by clicking on the corner point where vertical and horizontal rulers meet. You can also turn visibility of the rulers on or off by selecting the Rulers command in the Actions menu in the Report Designer toolbar.

Zooming in and out may be very useful when working with the design. The following options are available:

Specify the zoom scale in the toolbar or select from a number of the pre-defined scales (scale of 100% corresponds to the actual size of the design).

Click on the icon in the Report Designer toolbar. The current zoom scale will be increased by a factor of two.

Click on the icon in the Report Designer toolbar. The current zoom scale will be reduced by a factor of two.

Select “Fit to page” in the zoom box of the toolbar to fit the entire design into the screen.

When the grid is displayed new elements created in the design will be snapped to the grid. All movements of the elements will be snapped to the grid as well. To turn grid on or off select the Show Grid command from the Actions menu of the Report Designer toolbar.

To specify grid settings select the Grid Settings command from the Actions menu of the Report Designer toolbar – the Grid Settings dialog will be displayed, where you will be able to specify the resolution of the grid and its color.

You can quickly apply the entire presentation style of the one element to some other element. To do this select the element the style of which you want to use and click on the icon in the Report Designer toolbar to “copy” the style. Then select the element you want to apply the style to and click on the icon in the toolbar to “paste” the style.