Field Style

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Field Style

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In the Field Style dialog you can modify attributes that are specific to Field objects.  Here you can set the expression used to retrieve information from the data source, specify a picture clause, set the text alignment and specify other miscellaneous options that affect how a Field object prints.

 

_bm84

 

To modify the Field object's expression, click the _bm11 icon to display the Expression Builder where you can modify the expression.

 

The Picture clause is useful for formatting the value returned by the Field object's expression.  For example, if the expression returns a numeric value that you wish to format as currency, you would specify a picture clause of "$ 999,999.99".

 

In the Style section, you can set the alignment of the Field object's output.  This is the same setting that is available in the Text Align dialog.  It is included here for convenience.

 

Printing sorted records can produce rows of text with the same information (duplicates) on them.  The Print Duplicates check box allows you to control how duplicate values are printed.  For example, consider the following output:

 

Salesman

 Closed Date

DAC

 /10/96

DAC

 /15/96

LLA

 /10/96

LLA

 /15/96

LLA

 /17/96

 

The sorted Salesman field contains duplicate records of information.  "DAC" is duplicated once and "LLA" is duplicated twice.  The following output is the same except that the Print Duplicates option is not selected for the Salesman field:

Salesman

 Closed Date

DAC

 /10/96

 

 /15/96

LLA

 /10/96

 

 /15/96

 

 /17/96

 

The Vertical Size option causes the Field object to re-calculate its height each time it is printed.  The Field object height can decrease to zero or increase in size to span multiple pages.  This option is useful for printing variable length memo fields.  If you select this option, it is recommended that you do not select the Fixed Size band option for the band where the Field object resides.

 

The RTF Stream option informs the Field object that the string returned by the Field object's expression is an RTF stream.  You can use this option to embed RTF formatted text into your report.  The RTF stream must be a valid RTF 1.0 stream, or it will not print.  Since the stream is retrieved from an expression, the source of the stream can be a memo field or the return value of a function.  Currently, only a subset of the RTF standard is supported.  Supported features include: mixed fonts, text colors and paragraph formatting.