Sidebar Report Tiles

Hello Everybody,

Report tiles in Panorama 6 give a great deal of flexibility to laying out a printed report. For the most part, setting up the tiles in a form is straight-forward. Some experimentation, and checking with Preview eventually results in a good looking report, with everything printed out where expected.

But, this is not true with Sidebar tiles! I always have trouble with those.

Take a database with 2 groups. Pretty common to do so.

If you have both a Group Header (1) tile and a Group Header (2) tile, the Header (2) tile will print at the first database record, but the Header (1) tile will not print until lower in the database when the next group is reached. Just as you would expect.

But if you have both a Group Sidebar (1) and a Group Sidebar (2) tile on the form, BOTH tiles print at the first record. The Sidebar (1) tile doesn’t wait until the next group is reached. This is NOT what you (or at least I) would expect. And it makes it really frustrating to get the report right.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for some time, but not so much that I would complain. I realize this is a lower priority for Jim, who has his hands full getting Pan X ready for issue. But I hope that eventually the report tiles methodology is reviewed, and improved. You could have the greatest database organized in fantastic ways, which Panorama can do. But unless you can write a report to distribute the results, organized in a meaningful and clear manner, it detracts from the overall effort.

Jim, does Pan X make any modifications to the report tile method?

Regards,
Vic