FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

Creating Layouts for Reports

You’ve now knocked out two good layouts—a detail layout (see Chapter 4) and a list layout (described in this chapter). Layouts like these meet many typical data-base needs: You’ve got your detail layout for finding and viewing individual records, and your list layout for rapidly scanning many records at once. You also want to do reporting, an equally important task in a typical database. A report’s no different from any other layout as far as FileMaker is concerned. But report layouts are designed from the ground up to be printed. Almost no database gets by without some kind of a report layout, and most important databases have several, from straightforward lists to powerful snapshots of your data’s important statistics, like sales by region or inventory by product category.

The People database needs a reporting layout, too. In this chapter you’ll create a report layout for a simple purpose: printing a list of people. You can print a report, and then file it as a hard copy backup, take it with you on a trip, or mail it to an associate. But FileMaker’s reporting powers go far beyond simple lists. The next chapter introduces FileMaker’s powerful data summarization and reporting capabilities.

Visualize the Result Preview Mode

First, you need a rough idea of how your layout should look. This step is especially important when you create a report, since the physical constraints of a piece of paper often dictate the working space you have. When you create a detail ...