Laying out Word reports correctly

fcltd

Hi,<br />
<br />
This is my first posting here so I hope you will go easy on me ;-)<br />
<br />
We have outsourced the production of our BIRT reports to an individual. The requirements were for the ability to generate a report in Word or PDF format, that then accessed Java objects we have created for data to go into the report.<br />
<br />
All the integration has worked well.<br />
<br />
However, the requirement for the report was that there would be different levels of heading, and text would be aligned under the heading title as follows:<br />
<br />
<strong class='bbc'>1. Management Summary</strong><br />
<br />
.....This report .......<br />
<br />
.....<strong class='bbc'>1.2 Results Overview</strong><br />
<br />
...........The results of the engagement were ....<br />
<br />
<br />
[I am afraid I cannot work out how to make the above look correct in this post - every . is in fact a space in the requirements i.e. dots show indentation.]<br />
<br />
The report has come back to us yet when we open a generated report in Word, every one of the lines above is effectively in a table and the table has been used to create the appropriate indentation. <br />
<br />
The goal was the Word report could be opened in Word and amended, etc. before being sent to the client - but this is almost impossible as it is effectively one big table with one or a couple of sentences on each line.<br />
<br />
Is this really the only way to get Word to align using BIRT or does this show a lack of experience for the person who did the work?<br />
<br />
And the main question I guess is: can BIRT be used to generate reports like the above that can then subsequently be further edited in Word, or is this an aspiration too far? If so, what format would people suggest?<br />
<br />
Many thanks in advance<br />
<br />
Cheers<br />
<br />
Graham

thuston

It is not really feasible to convert a Grid/Table layout into simple tabbed paragraphs for Word.
The report may be very simple, but the possibility for more complex reports makes this unrealistic as a desired output.

If you want your users to do additional work on the output document, it may be better to use Excel.
At least in Excel the Grid layout makes sense and you won't have anyone complaining of why their report doesn't appear hand typed.