WDReportGen Frequently Asked Questions

WDReportGen is a report generator for Microsoft ® Word ® that uses Microsoft Word as reporting tool and outputs reports in Microsoft Word document, HTML, XML, RTF or other format.

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

Yes. This is a main feature of WDReportGen. 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 Word. You can take full advantage of Microsoft Word 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 WDReportGen can be run on your desktop or server. So you can use WDReportGen 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 WDReportGen 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 WDReportGen in the Currently installed programs box, and then click the Change/Remove button.

• For Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0:

Click WDReportGen 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 WDReportGen, you should do as follows:

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

2. Create a WRF file with a .wrf extension using WDReportGen. The WRF file tell WDReportGen how to extract data from database, and where and how to put data.

3. Run the WRF file to generate a report in Microsoft Word document format.

After WDReportGen is installed, some sample reports are installed too. The sample reports include a sample database, some report template files (.doc) and WRF files (.wrf). They are located in the WordReport 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 WDReportGen.
2. Open a WRF file. Click Open on the File menu.
3. Run the WRF 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 Word document generated by WDReportGen.

To make a report using WDReportGen, you should create a report template file first. This report template is a Microsoft Word document 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 WDReportGen, you must create a WRF file with a .wrf extension. The WRF 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 WRF file tells WDReportGen 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 WDReportGen 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 Word, 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 WDReportGen Help and the samples customer_profile.wrf, invoice.wrf, product_catalog.wrf and sales_detail.wrf within WDReportGen.

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 acccess 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.wrf, product_catalog.wrf and sales_detail.wrf within WDReportGen.

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.wrf" within WDReportGen.

To create a chart in a report, you should create the chart in the template file. You can create a chart using Microsoft Graph.

1. First add a chart in the report template using Microsoft Graph. On the Insert menu, click Chart.

2. Enter the sample data into the datasheet of the chart.

3. Customize your chart, and choose the chart type and the various chart options.

4. Delete the sample data.

5. Change the chart to an inline shape if it is a floating shape.

6. Write functions in a WRF file to input the data.

For more detail information, please refer to the sample monthly_sales.wrf within WDReportGen.

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.

WDReportGen 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.

Yes, WDReportGen 2.2 or later support text BLOB.

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

1. Store the path and name of the graphics files in the database.
2. Identify the image fileds 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.

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

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

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

You can protect the generated report so that it can not be modified. To protect the report, select the Protect Report check box in the Configuration dialog box.

Yes, it's completely free for all.