Extend report body to full page?

[dvh71]

The question at hand for me is this: I'm creating a report for an invoice, within the invoice-line-items table, as recommended (rather than a portal from invoices).

I need lines to extend down the page dividing the four columns of information in the body of the report (qty, descr, unit-cost, total). However, if my body is only 3 lines, the lines I've drawn in the body section of the report only extend 3 lines down, leaving a very unattractive blank area between the last line and the footer of the report. So I get a report that looks like this:

Header

| Qty | Descr | Cost | Total |

______________________________________

| 1 | asdff | 1.50 | 1.50 |

| 1 | asdff | 1.50 | 1.50 |

| 1 | asdff | 1.50 | 1.50 |

______________________________________

footer

---

Anyone know how to fill in that blank space with the vertical lines that should be there? Do you somehow fill with the body? Or is there another trick to get the lines to continue down to the bottom of the page? I get the feeling that I'm missing something...

FYI, I'm replacing an invoice report that uses portals because of an obscure printing issue, where, from one computer only, versions 5.0 and 5.5, lines 1-11 and 16 print fine, but all others are omitted. I cannot replicate this issue on any other machine. Go figure.

Thanks for your help!

[jasonwood]

I'm not confident in this answer but I think if you start drawing the line in the header (just slightly above the top of the body), you can extend them down as long as you like and they will always show up.

[Vaughan]

Make the body part just the size of each line item. Set the layout to view as list.

Put a horizontal line right on the dotted border between the header and body. Put another horizontal line between the body and footer (or just on the dotted line if there is no footer). This is your top, middle (between each line item) and bottom lines taken care of.

For the vertical lines you use the left and right borders on the field objects. Make the field objects fit from the pixel under the header to the dotted line at the bottom of the body part -- that's the whole body part. Format the left and right borders to display as required.

You may have to fiddle around with the sliding/printing option or even turn it off if the fields are likely to have differing numbers of lines.

If the line thickness is set to hairline you may get a slight gap at the top of each body part -- it's more obvious when the printer is high resolution, like 600 dpi laser. If you set the line to 1 pixel it's not visible. Either way it may not be a problem.

[dvh71]

I think the <code> example was a bit misleading. From your description, I think you were explaining how to get rid of all the extra space between the lines with data. I'll try to be more specific:

Take an invoice with 3 line items. I have a header section at the top of the page, a body which displays those 3 line items, and the footer at the bottom of the page. However, there is room for 6 line items to be displayed within the body. When the report is previewed and printed, the body extends the length of the page, less the header and footer, yielding room for the 6 line items. However, when only 3 line items exist, they are displayed at the top of the body section, leaving 3 'blank' lines at the bottom of the body section. My dividing lines, which line up without issue when data is available, are not extended to the bottom of the body section, leaving white space/blank lines as displayed in the <code> example above.

So for each line of data, my lines display fine, but when there is less data (3) than display lines (6) available, I'm left with empty lines with no data and, since my borders are attached to data fields. I get the same behavior if I draw the lines independent of the fields.

FM is drawing body rows only when data is available. I need to fill any empty body rows to get the report to display as one would expect, or I need to approach this from a different direction.

Hope this is more clear. And thanks!

Doug Van Horn

[dvh71]

As far as starting the line in the header, that works to an extent. If I know I'm only printing one page of a certain size, and I can get the length of the line to fit into my layout, then that works. However, if the invoice goes to 2 pages, my body length on the second page just jumped quite a bit, so my line is now short.

I think after explaining it above, the question is "Is there a way to display empty, placeholder lines in the body of a report to ensure the border lines are printed all the way down the page?" Or something like that anyway.

[dvh71]

This is totally like talking to myself, but that's okay, I'm working in a vaccuum here in my new bid-ness (I'm a soft-eng turned business owner of a non-software business).

So if a put a trailing grand summary part I can cap off the bottom of the body, which achieves a look /close/ to what I wanted (where the lines in the body extend to the bottom cap). I'd really like that cap to be at the bottom of the page, with lines down to it, just above the footer, rather than hanging in the middle of the page. But until I figure out how to do that, or someone else clue's me, this'll have to do.

If someone does know how to extend that down, I'm all ears!

Thanks!

doug.

[Vaughan]

OK, I understand. I also know that getting the blank rows to print is a devil of a job... in fact it'd be best done with a portal!

I tell people that cannot have blank rows and let it rest there. IMHO it's not worth the trouble for a bit of trimming.

Probably the best bet -- and the solution that the big companies use -- is to not print the borders at all from the database, but instead have them pre-printed on the invoice paper.

[BobWeaver]

I was playing with this problem a few months ago, and came up with a solution for it. I have attached an example file.

What you have to do is create a large leading sub-summary that is equal to the size of the page minus the header, footer and one body record. This subsummary is sorted by some dummy field that you won't actually have in your sort order. In other words it's just a dummy part to give you enough room to draw long border lines. Now draw your border lines starting in the header and extending all the way down through the leading sub-summary and ending in the body part. Then draw small border lines in the body part extending slightly into the footer or trailing summary part(s). Tweak as necessary.

BorderReport.fp5.zip

[Vaughan]

Will this break when switching printers that have different page margins -- like laser vs inkjet?

[BobWeaver]

Probably.

Umm... I guess it's best to set fixed page margins at about 1/2 inch or so. I haven't had any problem going between a couple of different laser printers and an epson ink jet though so far. I think it's actually fairly robust.

I redid the example file with fixed page margins and attached it again. Give it a try.

BorderReport.fp5.zip