The articles in this section of the Knowledge Base involve working with Columns for display in your reports. To access the Report Designer, select Toolbox Setup > Design Reports > Design (Report Type) Report. Select New Report to design a report from scratch or New Report from Existing. Select Designer to open Report Designer.

For particularly long reports, it is sometimes preferable to shorten the length by splitting the Data Band or Page up into multiple columns. The Report Designer supports two types of columns, Columns on a Page and Columns on a Data Band.

Columns on a Page

The Columns property of the Report Template page is used for outputting data in columns. This property is set to 0 by default. Changing the value to two or more will cause the data to be output in columns. The Column Gaps and Column Width properties will also need to be set.

The Column Width property is used to determine the width of the columns. The width entered here is applied to all of the columns. The Column Gaps property specifies the width of the space between the columns.

1. Column 1’s Width
   
2. Column 2’s Width
   
3. The Gap’s Width
   

In columnar output mode, the Page is separated vertically, and the Report is logically output in the first column, then in the second, and so on.

An unlimited number of columns can be inserted within a page.

When the Report Template from Figure 02 is rendered, it produces the following Report:

The columns are generated automatically. Report Designer prints Data Rows until there is no free space left on a page. Instead of creating a new page, a new column is added, and data is output in that new Column until there is no free space. If there is still data to be output after a page is filled, a new page is created, and the process starts over.

Columns on a Data Band

The one disadvantage to columns is when the situation arises where there is sufficient data to fill only one Column, leaving the other columns empty and that part of the Page unused. To get around this problem, use Data Bands to output columns instead of using the Page.

To enable the display of data in columns, use the Columns property of the Data Band. As with Columns on a Page, set the Columns property to two or more to create a columnar format for the Report.

The Column Width and Column Gaps properties need to be set as well.

The Column Direction property is covered in another article.

Setting up the Report Template with Columns on a Data Band results in something similar to Figure 05.

In Figure 05, a Column Header Band is used in place of a traditional Header Band. Like the traditional Header Band, this band will automatically replicate the Column Headers above both columns. Despite this Band spreading across the Page, unlike the traditional Header Band, you do not need to copy the Column Headers over manually.

When the report is rendered, it should look something like Figure 06.

Note the difference between using Columns on a Page versus Columns on a Data Band. The Columns on a Data Band method leads to two evenly spaced columns with space at the bottom of the Page, as opposed to the empty space being in the column on the right. This method leads to a much more uniform Report.