Creating and editing print templates

In order to create or edit a print template, select a desired template in the "Print" window and press the “Edit Template” button or the “New Template” button if you want to create a new template:

After you do that, the "Template Editor" window will open:

The upper part of the window contains buttons for working with text (selecting font, alignment, insertion and so on).  To learn more about using these buttons, see the “Working with text and descriptions” chapter.  In addition, some new options have been added.  They are described below.

Template Name: Name of the template that will be displayed in the template list in the print window (required).

Report Header: This field is used to create report header, which will be located at the top of the first page.  We don’t recommend entering field values here, because during printing only one record (the first one) will be inserted.  The only exception here are single-record templates (as opposed to group records).  For example, a customer address printed on the envelope.

The Report Header field may contain any information you would like to place in the beginning of the report.  For example, report name, pictures or field names (in case you want to print a table record with column names on top and values below).

Report Detail: This field is used to select all records that contain information to be printed. Accordingly, during printing, information from this field will be repeated for each selected record.  For example, if you print one record, the information from Report Detail will be included in the report only once; if there are 10 records, Report Details will be repeated 10 times.

This is where we recommend you place field values.  Besides this, you can place here any information, like texts, images and so on.  Just keep in mind that when the report is created, the field is repeated.

Report Footer: This field is used to create the bottom part of your report.  It will be located at the bottom of the last page.  As with Report Header, we don’t recommend you insert field values here, because only one (last) record will be printed.

The Report Footer field can be used to place any information you would like to see at the bottom of the printed report – text, images and so on.

How to add special information:

Button ("Insert – Report Title" main menu item) is intended for quick insertion of the Report title.  For example, if you are creating a template for the Address book, when you click the button, “Address book” will be inserted as report title.  This feature is specially created for international users, because if the text is entered manually, another user who has different language settings won’t be able to read it (the text won’t be translated).

When the “Insert Report Title” button is used to insert the report title, it is highlighted with pink.  This is done to make the inserted title stand out from the rest of the text.  This highlighting is not visible during printing.

You can change the title parameters – font size, color, etc.  The only limit is that you can not edit the text of the title.  If you try to do this, you will get error message when trying to save or preview the report.

Button ("Insert – Field Name" main menu item) is used to insert database field name into report.  When you press the button, you will see the dialog window that contains all available field names:

Select field name you would like to insert and press “OK”.

Just like with the Report Title, you can enter the name manually, but it will not be translated when the default language of the program is changed.  The inserted field name is highlighted with green to be visible in the surrounding text.  This highlighting won’t be visible after printing.

You can change the insertion  parameters – font size, color, etc.  The only limit is that you can not edit the text of the inserted element.  If you try to do this, you will get error message when trying to save or preview the report.

Button ("Insert – Field Value" main menu item) is used to insert database field value into report.

When you press the button, you will see the dialog window that contains all available fields:

Select the name of the field value of which you would like to insert and press “OK”.  

You can not enter the value manually, because it won’t be recognized during processing and the value from the corresponding field won’t be inserted from the record.

The inserted field value is highlighted with blue to make it visible in the surrounding text.

You can change the insertion parameters – font size, color, etc.  The only limit is that you can not edit the text of the inserted element.  If you try to do this, you will get error message when trying to save or preview the report.

Button ("Insert – All Additional Fields" main menu item) is available only when creating a print template for the Address book.  Pressing this button results in inserting all additional fields at once into the report.

Additional fields are the custom fields that user can add when an Address book record is created.

When inserting additional field, be careful – the fields are inserted as a table:

This insertion is a complex object: the inserted table will be repeated in the report as many times as the number of the fields in the printed record.  You can change field font color, table properties and so on.

You can not change the number of columns and rows in the table, insert extra text or object, or edit the name of inserted table. If you try to do this, you will get error message when trying to save or preview the report.

Some advice for creating print templates:

In order for your report to look good and be easy to read and comprehend, we recommend you to place field names and values in the table cells.  This way the text in the report will be aligned.  If you want the table not to be visible in the final report, you can alter table parameters, setting the width of table and cell borders to 0 or by selecting white color for them (see "Working with text and descriptions").

When preparing a report, C-Organizer automatically merges tables present in “Report Header”, “Report Detail” and “Report Footer” into one table (if the tables are present).  This is done to make editing the report easier and to avoid double borders (if the tables are stacked on top of each other, the merging borders will be thicker, because two lines will merge into one).

Important: C-Organizer will merge tables ONLY if the number of columns and their width is IDENTICAL.

We recommend you create one table first (for example, in “Report Header”), and then copy it in other report parts.  This way all tables will be absolutely identical.  The color of tables, cell and borders are of no importance.

After creating a template, you can see what the report created with this template will look like.  Simply press this button  ("File - Preview" main menu item). The preview window will open and you will see a report prepared for printing (see chapter “Previewing and printing report”).

The settings from the print window will be used for printing the report.  If you selected one record – only one record will be processed; if you selected a group of record, the entire group will be included into the report.

To save your print table, press button  ("File - Save" main menu item) and enter file name.

Attention:

C-Organizer automatically finds template files before printing, so they have to be stored in folder …\C-Organizer Pro\Templates.RPT\, otherwise the program won’t locate a template.