Business Objects Training

July 2008 e-newsletter

Did you know that there are functions available only in Desktop Intelligence that can help with report formatting? For example, the PageInSection() function can be used to create section headings and let the user know that the section spans multiple pages.

In this example, we have a report that groups the data by state. The state is the section master cell. In our example, the state of Michigan spans multiple pages, but by default, the section heading is only displayed at the beginning of the section. We are going to use the PageInSection() function and format the section master cell so that it gives us the state name and if there are multiple pages in the section we will append “(Cont’d)” to the section heading and repeat it on every page.

The original report looks like this:

The section master cell heading is currently displayed as:

We are going to modify the section master cell using the PageInSection() function. In our example, we are going to determine if the section is more than one page and if so, we will display “State: Name of State (Cont’d)” and if the section is only one page we will display only “State: Name of State”.

The PageInSection() function Returns the number of the page in a section of a report. The function requires one parameter and the syntax is PageInSection (section number).

The section number is determined by the number of sections and the order in which they were created. In our example, we have only one section, so the section number is 1.

Modify the section master cell heading with the following:

=If PageInSection(1) >1 Then "State: "+<Store State>+" (Cont'd)" Else "State: "+<Store State>

We also need to format the section master heading cell so that it will be repeated on each page:

Once we do that, our report section headings will display as follows:

Page 1:

Pages 2+

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