Regions

Often you will want to add regions to the report where various types of totaling can be carried out. For example, in a budget report, you may want to add regions where subtotals are calculated for each department.

CDD, as a report writing tool is "regionally driven," meaning that things happen because regions happen. Simply put, data prints in your report because a region exists to provide space for that data to print. Likewise, Macros, sub reports and Data Lookups are all triggered to execute when and if a Region executes.

Regions occur in a report based on instances of time in relation to data. A Detail region, for instance, occurs once per data row returned to the report, whereas the Page Header occurs once per page at the top of the page. Consequently, timing of events through the organization of regions is important to a CDD report.

Adding Regions

• Select Insert > Region from the main menu bar. The Region Level window appears.
• Select the region level. Click Next.
• Select the data element upon which to base the sort. Click Next.
• The Details window allows you to make several choices about the layout of your report based on the region you are adding. These layout options include: Page Eject Before (inserts a page-break before the new region), Page Eject After (inserts a page-break after the new region), Need space before next MARKED region (inserts a line-space after the new region), Print a BLANK line prior to this region for this MARKED region (inserts a line-space before the new region).
• Click Finish.
• The new region appears in the report design window.

Removing Regions

• Highlight the region to be removed (click anywhere in the body of the region)
• Select Edit > Remove Region.
• Confirm (click Yes) that you want to remove the region.

Formatting Regions

Double-click on the region. The Region Properties window has three tabs:

• The Details tab allows you to update the region description. In addition, several layout options are available: Page Eject Before (inserts a page-break before the new region), Page Eject After (inserts a page-break after the new region), Need space before next MARKED region (inserts a line-space after the new region), Print a BLANK line prior to this region for this MARKED region (inserts a line-space before the new region).
• The Print Conditions tab allows you to specify certain parameters wherein information will appear in this region of your report.
• The Border tab allows you to add a border to the selected region. Click Show Border to turn this feature on. You can define the color and thickness of the border as well as determine which sides of the region (left, right, top, bottom) the border will appear.

Re-sizing Region View

To manipulate the size of a region, use the mouse to move the cursor to the lower border of the detail area. When the cursor changes to a two-headed arrow, click and drag to resize the detail area.

Since CDD is a WYSIWYG report designer, the actual size of a region in a CDD report directly reflects the number of lines on the page. So, if you want your Detail double-spaced, then just re-size the Detail region to be two lines long.