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Alternative to report designer
Message
From
16/10/2007 22:57:50
Hilmar Zonneveld
Independent Consultant
Cochabamba, Bolivia
 
 
General information
Forum:
Visual FoxPro
Category:
Reports & Report designer
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01260825
Message ID:
01261398
Views:
10
>Is there a specific reason why you do most of your reports to Excel nowadays? Is it a demand by your customer(s) or is there another reason?

I must explain, first of all, that this is for internal use in the company. So, we can safely assume everyone has Excel installed - which is not always a safe assumption for commercial software.

We found that doing reports in Excel gives users more flexibility, since most users already have some basic knowledge of Excel, and can change data sorting, do autofilters, add formulae, etc. This is much more difficult to achive with the built-in VFP reports. (Another note: I did not compare several other tools that are popular among UT users, for example, Crystal Reports. Specifically in the case of CR, the company is quite reluctant to do any additional expenses. Now don't you explain the advantages of those expenses to me, since I didn't take that decision...)

Also, Excel provides some options for the programmer that are difficult to achieve with the built-in report designer. For example, try to make a report with a variable number of columns - for example, more or less columns, depending on the number of weeks the user wants to see!
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)
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