Formatting a Report

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Designing and Printing Reports > Formatting a Report

 

In addition to designing a report and editing the layout, you can also apply formatting to the columns, rows and cells in your report.  You can do this by using the formatting tools in the format toolbar found at the top of your report.

 

 

report_formatting

 

Below are descriptions of the icons on the Format Toolbar, from left to right:

 

Report Settings

 

Report settings are the place where you can edit your page layout information and define the groups for your report.  See Using Report Settings for further information.

 

Undo and Redo

 

If you make an error when editing or formatting your report, you can select the undo icon to undo your error.  You can also use the redo icon to reverse the undo action.

 

Page Zoom

 

You can zoom in and out of your page view, both in the design view and layout view.  Simply click the zoom in/zoom out buttons, choose a pre-selected zoom size from the drop-down menu or type in a custom zoom size.

 

Font and Font Size

 

You can highlight a cell, column or row and then select a different font or font size from the drop-down menus to change our font.

 

Font Style

 

In addition to changing the font, you can also select your text and change the style to Bold, Italics or Underline by selecting the appropriate icon.

 

Justification

 

Your text is displayed at a default justification based on its type (character, numeric, etc.).  However, you may change the justification by selecting the appropriate icon, either left-justify, center-justify or right-justify.

 

Alignment

 

Text is aligned to the middle of the cell vertically by default.  However, you may adjust alignment to the top or bottom of the cell by selecting the appropriate icon.

 

Border Style

 

To add borders or lines to a cell, select the drop-down arrow next to border icon and select the desired border style.

 

Text and Fill Color

 

You may change the text color or the background (fill) color of your cells by clicking the appropriate coloring icon.  When you click on a color icon, a color palette appears; select the color you wish to use and your cell will update accordingly.

 

Merge Cells

 

Merge cells is useful when you need to have text span more than one cell.  To merge cells, select the number of cells you wish to merge and then click the merge cells icon.  To remove the merge, simply toggle the merge cell icon to turn it off.

 

Wrap Text

 

If you have text that is wider than a cell and wish to display all the text within a cell, you can select the wrap text icon.  The text will wrap in your cell.  In order to see the full amount of text in your cell, you will need to either widen the column or make the row taller.  To remove text wrap, simply toggle the wrap text icon to turn it off.

 

 

Changing the Format Toolbar Location

 

By default, the Format toolbar is embedded at the top of each report document you open.  This makes it very easy to access the tools and doesn't take up additional space when you are using other types of documents (tables, queries, etc.)

 

However, sometimes it is useful to be able to access the Format toolbar for other document types, particularly for tables.  To toggle the Format Toolbar from being embedded in the report to being available for all documents, simply go to the View menu and select Format Toolbar.  The Toolbar will then appear underneath the Bookmarks Toolbar and be available at all times.  However, you may switch back to an embedded toolbar at any time by clicking the View > Format Toolbar a second time.

 

 

Learn More

 

For further information, please see the following sections:

 

Working in the Design View

Working in the Layout View