>Your explanations below made the concept clear to me. It's an interesting usage of Excel (and Notepad and the browser).

In the text report, the programm associated with .TXT and .HTM will be used.

>I guess that with some additional knowledge of Excel the layout can be completely controlled and Excel functions can be used to make additional computations there. The sky is the limit.

Basically, for more advanced Automation, you have to save a macro and look at the commands. Of course you can do this WITHOUT using my class; the class saves you the trouble of writing the repetitive stuff, such as the main loop and checking for group expressions.

>I notice that a copy of Excel is started and that users are consequently in control of the sheets. If they want to print, they'll have to choose File > Print. But I also imagine that it's an option to let VFP send the print instruction to Excel.

In my current version, there is an option to print directly. Excel must still be installed, but remains invisible.

I would like to make this newer version available, but I need some time to adapt it, since at the company, it is heavily tied to the framework we use (Visual Extend + my own extensions).

>One drawback when compared to a report designer is that the developer has no GUI when designing. While I no longer use Views, but instead suffice to code all queries, I still prefer the GUI when designing reports. But I'd agree if it would be noted that this is not an essential requirement when designing a report. Rather, it's a luxury.

Yeah, that is certainly a problem. But once you do agree to type code, you have full control of every aspect. For instance, you don't need to have every record on a separate line; in some of my reports, I use .Print() (next cell) for every record, and only go to the next line (.PrintLine()) when a group expression changes. This is the case in some reports that show data for a variable number of weeks or months.

I think that under these circumstances, WYSIWYG - for example, filling out some template - would be difficult to achieve.