Any suggestions for Aligning Qlikview Reports?

[dgreenberg]

Like just about anyone who has worked with Qlikview reports I love Nprinting.

However Qlikview Reports has me going nuts.

Top gauge - how it looks when printed to PDF (ignore size scale)

Next the mostly blank one with a small 80% at top is how it looks in the Qlikview Report Editor

The bottom one is how it looks in the print preview of the report editor.

The best is in the QVW the chart actually says 80% in it and is nice and centered and that's what I have to get in the printed PDF.

So does anyone have some undocumented tips on Qlikview Reporting and how to make the editor look vaguely like the printed result?

[c_gilbert]

It drives me nuts too! the only way I've found to do it is trial and error, and it will not look right in the Report Editor, but will look ok on the print out (just keep printing to PDF and making small adjustments).

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread incase anyone else has a better solution though!

[#3]

Hi Dan,

first of all I totally agree it has driven me nuts in the past! Best to be avoided with a barge pole!

If you have to use though, one of the things that I have found quite useful is creating a 'QV reports' hidden tab, which contains copies of the charts I need to bring into the report builder, basically giving you free reign to adjust the settings and sizing without adversely effecting your main tabs. I generally found it easier to get the report looking right by adjusting the chart than trying to fiddle with the report itself.

not sure if that helps you at all but just my two cents anyway!

Joe

[ThornOfCrowns]

There's a lot of fun(!) involved in getting reports to print in a WYSWYG way.

My main bugbears are that the values in the X / Y and Height / Width are not pixel/pica/mm values, but the size of the page broken into 1000 "units" so a chart that needs to be a quarter of a page is 0/0/250/250. I have no idea how these "units" are sent to the Printer, either a PDF creator or an old fashioned real paper one. I suspect that they get interpreted differently as I sometimes get different results between the two.

Secondly, the use of Fill / Fill with Aspect / Clip changes the way the info displays, but you don't get to see the result until you're run some data into it, especially if you're banding the data.

As Charlotte says, it's mostly down to trial and error.

EDIT: I also recommend the duplicate object / hidden tab method as mentioned by Joe, but remembering to keep them in sync if/when you change something is a different circle of Hell...

[dgreenberg]

Good suggestion and I thought about that but this report has so many tabs and charts I don't think I want to add that many new objects for the 18 reports.

[#6]

For existing expression updates keeping them aligned is fine really, just running both from variables, but yea agreed when bringing in new expressions / order changes/dimension changes etc

you need to be very careful

[c_gilbert]

I hate that there is no undo button either, so you spend ages getting something in the right place, then accidentally move it, and you can't undo it!

[ThornOfCrowns]

Yes, oh how I laugh when that happens!

[#9]

It's been a while since I used them I'll be honest but I remember if you went to move an object, and just click and dragged, the object would often jump back to its original creation point and then start moving, such a pain for making adjustments. Had to always move a few pixels with the arrow keys first and then it seemed to be okay to drag.

Ah the quirks

[ThornOfCrowns]

I have taken to doing a wireframe on gridded paper before attempting the report, then just typing the values directtly into to the caption X/Y boxes to force the bloody things into position to avoid that issue. It also satisfies my bloke OCD to make things line up correctly.

"Design is just making things line up" Jon Hicks 2006

www. hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/design-is-just-making-things-line-up