PTReportGen Frequently Asked Questions

PTReportGen is a report generator for Microsoft ® PowerPoint ® that uses Microsoft PowerPoint as reporting tool and outputs reports in Microsoft PowerPoint format.

If you know how to use Microsoft PowerPoint and write SQL statements, you can use PTReportGen to create all kinds of reports as you need. The report generated by PTReportGen is a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation or other format file, such as HTML.

Yes. This is a main feature of PTReportGen. The complexity might come from reports formatting as well as reports content.

• The complex report formatting

You design reports like layouts, styles, formats directly using Microsoft PowerPoint. You can take full advantage of Microsoft PowerPoint including characters formatting, paragraphs formatting, bulleted and numbered lists, borders, shading, headers and footers, automatic formatting, style, graphics, diagrams, and more.

• The complex report content

In one report, you can execute more than one SQL statement, and get data using different queries. Further more, you can create a temporary table, prepare data using many SQL statements including INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE/INSERT SELECT, and then make a report.

No. But PTReportGen can be run on your desktop or server. So you can use PTReportGen on the server to generate the reports. If you want to run it in the background on the server, you need to run it in command line mode.

Run the installation program, and follow the instructions to complete installation.

If you don't have installed Microsoft Office, please install it first.

If your environment is Windows 95/98 and Office 97, and you don't have installed VB6.0 run-time files, please install it. For Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Office 2000 or later, you do not need to install VB6.0 run-time files because they are included in these OS and Office. To install VB6.0 run-time files, just download and run vbrun60sp5.exe.

If you don't have installed ODBC Driver for the database you want to access, please install it.

If your OS is Windows 95/98 and you don't have installed MS Data Access Components 2.0 (MDAC_TYP) or later, please install it. For Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003, you do not need to install MDAC_TYP because it is preinstalled in these OS. To install MDAC_TYP, just download and run mdac_typ.exe.

You can uninstall PTReportGen from [Control Panel].

1. Double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon in the Windows Control Panel.

2. Do one of the following:

• For Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003 Edition:

Click PTReportGen in the Currently installed programs box, and then click the Change/Remove button.

• For Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0:

Click PTReportGen on the Install/Uninstall tab, and then click the Add/Remove button.

3. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete uninstall.

To create a report with PTReportGen, you should do as follows:

1. Create a report template file using Microsoft PowerPoint, define the layouts, styles, formats of reports.

2. Create a PTR file with a .ptr extension using PTReportGen. The PTR file tell PTReportGen how to extract data from database, and where and how to put data.

3. Run the PTR file to generate a report in Microsoft PowerPoint presentation format.

After PTReportGen is installed, some sample reports are installed too. The sample reports include a sample database, some report template files (.doc) and PTR files (.ptr). They are located in the pptreport directory under \Samples.

To use these samples, you must add a data source named "Report Sample", and specify the database "Sample.mdb". If you have not installed MS access ODBC driver, please install it first.

Creating a System DSN for a Microsoft Access Database

1. Run PTReportGen.
2. Open a PTR file. Click Open on the File menu.
3. Run the PTR file to generate a report. Click Run on the Report menu.
4. Open, view and check the report. Click Open Report File on the File menu.
5. Open, check the log file. Click Open Log File on the File menu.

The sample reports can be changed to adapt to your own needs.

This is a problem of multilanguage. You are trying to open a database or an object in a database that was created in another language edition of Microsoft Access. You can try as follow:

1. Open the database "sample.mdb" using Microsoft Access.
2. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the General tab.
3. Make sure that the New Database Sort Order is set to General and then click OK.

The report file is a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation generated by PTReportGen.

To make a report using PTReportGen, you should create a report template file first. This report template is a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation that defines the layouts, formats and styles of the report. In the report template, you can input static content such as titles, descriptions, comments, a cover, a company logo, and set the format for the static content and data got from data sources.

To generate a report with PTReportGen, you must create a PTR file with a .ptr extension. The PTR file contains information such as the name of the report template file, the name of the report file, log file name, data sources, parameters and functions. The PTR file tells PTReportGen how to get data from data sources and how to put data into a report.

A function includes a SQL statement and some arguments. A function can be used to execute a SQL statement, and tell PTReportGen whether or how to add data into a report.

You can test SQL statements using Microsoft Query that is a component of Microsoft Office. You can find it under the installation directory of Microsoft Office.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSQRY32.EXE"

It probably is a wrong SQL statement. Such as a missing column, or syntax error.

Use SQL to sort your data. In a SELECT statement, you can use the ORDER BY clause to have your results displayed in a sorted order.

There are two ways.

1. You can add total using (Formula) fields of Microsoft PowerPoint, such as SUM(above).

2. You can use aggregate function in SQL statement.

(1) In the fixed table report, you can add total directly using a separate SQL.
(2) In the variable table report, you must add total first using a Fixed Table report function before you use the Variable Table report function. Because the cell address of the total field will change after you use Variable Table report function.

To group data in a report, you can use GROUP VARIABLE TABLE REPORT function. For more detail information, refer to PTReportGen Help and the samples customer_profile.ptr, invoice.ptr, product_catalog.ptr and sales_detail.ptr within PTReportGen.

A subreport is a report within a report. A subreport would typically be used to perform one-to-many lookups such as Customer / Order / OrderDetails.

To make sub reports within the main report,

1. Write a JOIN SQL statement to access data from two or more tables. For example, you can join Customers, Orders and OrderDetails tables.

2. Use GROUP VARIABLE TABLE REPORT function.

For more detail information, refer to the samples invoice.ptr, product_catalog.ptr and sales_detail.ptr within PTReportGen.

You can use aggregate function in SQL statement.

(1) Use aggregate function and GROUP BY clause, get summary data for each group, and insert results into a temporary table.
(2) If you have different kinds of summaries, repeat the step 1, and insert results into another temporary table.
(3) Use group report function, and join the detail data and the summary data using JOIN. The summary fields must be included in the group list.
(4) Except for sub-totals, you can add total too using aggregate function in SQL statement. You must add total first using a Fixed Table report function before you use the Variable Table report function. Because the cell address of the total field will change after you use Variable Table report function.

For more information, refer to the sample "sales_detail.ptr" within PTReportGen.

In SQL statements, you can use parameters.

1. To use a parameter, you must declare it first. A parameter has a name, a title and a default value. To define a parameter, click Configuration on the Report menu, and click the Parameter tab
2. In SQL statements, use the parameter name.

PTReportGen will replace the parameter name with the actual value before it submits the SQL statements to data sources.

Example

Define a parameter as follows:

Name: $CustomerName
Title: Customer Name

You can use the parameter name "$CustomerName" in SQL statements. The parameter name in SQL statements should be delimited by quotation mark. For example:

SELECT CompanyName
,CityName
,CountryName
,ContactName
FROM Customers, Cities, Countries
WHERE Customers.CityCode = Cities.CityCode
AND Customers.CountryCode = Cities.CountryCode
AND Customers.CountryCode = Countries.CountryCode
AND CompanyName LIKE '$CustomerName%'
;

You can use parameters in the path and name of the report file, template file and log file. For example, you define a parameter $CustomerID, you can name the report file as follows:

report\report_$CustomerID.doc
report\$CustomerID\report.doc

Of course, just write FILLORDER=col in REPORT function. For example, there are 1 field and 10 records, you can show them as 1 row and 10 columns on report.

You can insert pictures into your report from using many popular graphics files PTReportGen.

1. Store the path and name of the graphics files in the database.
2. Identify the image fields in the report function.
3. To specify the inserted way, text wrapping style and size, you can write a formatting expression into the cell or field in the report template file.

PTReportGen will read the graphics files, insert them into the report, and set the inserted way, text wrapping style and size of the pictures.

To use a form report, you can reference a shape or text box by its name. We developed a PowerPoint add-in "name.ppa" that can display the name of an object and rename the object in a slide. You can find the add-in under the PTReportGen's working directory.

To load an add-in:

1. Launch Microsoft PowerPoint.

2. Click Add-Ins under Tools menu. The Add-Ins dialog box appears.

3. Press Add New button, and browse to the add-in file, and Press OK button.

4. If prompted to enable macros, press Enable Macros button. The add-in will be listed in the Add-Ins dialog box. Press Close button to close the dialog box.

Check the macro settings. If this is not set to at least Medium, the add-in won't load. To resolve this:

1. Click Macros under Tools menu, and click Security. The Security dialog box appears.

2. Click the Security Level tab, and click Medium.

3. Press OK button.

4. Now load the add-in.

5. Once the add-in has been loaded you can set the security level back to High.

I have renamed the object in a slide using the add-in "name.ppa", and saved the PowerPoint file. But I find I do not save the change when I reopen the PowerPoint file. It may be a problem of Allow fast saves option. You should save a complete file.

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Save tab.

2. Clear the Allow fast saves check box when you finish working on the file, and then save it one last time. A full save occurs when this check box is clear.

In most of reports, you just need to execute one SQL statement. But sometimes, you want to execute more than one SQL statement in one report processing.

The PTR file is a text file. You can write a program to make a PTR file using C, perl or DOS shell, and then run PTReportGen to generate report. These steps can be written into a batch file.

Yes. If you do not save a password in the PTR file, a login dialog box will appear when you run the PTR file in PTReportGen. You can input password interactively to log on to the data source. If you want to run PTReportGen in command line mode, you can input usernames and passwords in command line.

Yes, it's completely free for all.