15
Printing worksheets and graphs

Printing worksheets and graphs

This chapter explains how to print worksheets and graphs in Discoverer, and contains the following topics:

• "About sharing Discoverer results with other users"

• "About the Print Wizard"

• "About printing worksheets and graphs"

• "About printing worksheets that contain page items"

• "About printing options and scaling"

• "How to print Discoverer data"

• "How to print Discoverer data to PDF files"

About sharing Discoverer results with other users

Discoverer makes it easy to share data between Discoverer and other application formats. Having used Discoverer to identify and analyze information, you will often want to share your results with other users.

You can share your Discoverer results in a number of ways:

• by printing reports on paper or in PDF (Portable Document Format) format (for more information, see "About the Print Wizard")

• by giving other Discoverer users access to your workbooks (for more information, see "About sharing workbooks")

• by exporting data in a number of different application formats (for more information, see "Exporting data to other applications")

• by exporting data to Oracle Reports format (for more information, see "About exporting worksheets to Oracle Reports")

• by publishing information on your company's intranet using Oracle Portal (For more information, see the Oracle Discoverer Administrator Administration Guide or Oracle Portal documentation)

About the Print Wizard

Discoverer provides the Print Wizard to help you print worksheets and graphs. For example, you might want to mail a printed copy of a Discoverer report to a client. Or, if you have Adobe Acrobat installed, you might want to create an Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) file that you can e-mail to other colleagues.

You can print a worksheet:

• by printing it to a printer

• by printing it to a PDF file

Note: To print to PDF format, you must have Adobe Acrobat installed on your machine.

In Discoverer, you print items currently displayed on the worksheet, as follows:

• if you want to print items that are not currently displayed, make sure that you display the items on the worksheet before you start

• if you do not want to print items displayed on the worksheet, make sure that you remove the items from the worksheet before you start

Note: If you print a worksheet that contains parameters, you are prompted to enter parameter values. For example, you might be prompted to choose which year's data you want to print.

What you see on screen prints out the same way on paper (or PDF format) including worksheet data, headings, and graphs.

You can print:

• single worksheets

• all worksheets in a workbook

• the graph associated with a worksheet

Discoverer can print reports in both portrait and landscape orientation.

Notes

• When you print a worksheet with a graph in Discoverer Plus, the worksheet and graph print on separate pages. To print a worksheet and its graph on the same page, you might:
  • use the 'Printable Page' link in Discoverer Viewer

  • use Discoverer Portlet Provider to display multiple worksheets and graphs as portlets on a single portal page, and print the Portal page (for more information about Discoverer Portlet Provider, see "Publishing workbooks to OracleAS Portal"

  • export the worksheet and graph to an external application (e.g. HTML, Microsoft Excel) and print the page

About printing worksheets and graphs

Worksheets and their graphs print sequentially. In other words, each graph prints immediately after its worksheet.

Graphs always print on a single sheet of paper. Within the boundaries of that sheet of paper, you can choose to print the graph at different sizes. You can:

• print the graph the same size that you see on screen

• resize the graph to fill the entire sheet of paper

• resize the graph to any size smaller than the sheet of paper

If what you see on screen is too large to fit on a single sheet of paper, the Print Wizard automatically resizes the graph to fit on the sheet.

About printing worksheets that contain page items

When you print a worksheet that contains page items, you print exactly what you see on the screen. In other words, you print data for the currently selected page item.

To print other combinations of page items, first pivot the page items and then print the modified worksheet.

About printing options and scaling

Depending on what printer type you are using, you can also use the Windows Print dialog to configure how worksheets print. For example, you can change the paper layout, paper size, text colors, and resolution.

If you are printing to a postscript printer, you can also change the scaling options for the printed worksheet. This enables you to change the number of rows that are printed on one page.

For example, you might have a report that is one and a half printed pages long that you want to print on one printed page only. Here, you might change the scaling option from 100% to 50% so that the report fits on one printed page.

To change the scaling options for a postscript printer, click Properties in the Print dialog and change the scaling (see figure below).

Figure 15-1 Windows Print dialog

Text description of the illustration prn_nt.gif

How to print Discoverer data

Discoverer enables you to print individual worksheets in a workbook, or an entire workbook.

To print Discoverer data:

1. Open the workbook and worksheet that you want to print.

2. If the worksheet contains page items, make sure that the worksheet displays the combination of page items that you want.

   For example, to print data for the year 2000 and the West region, the worksheet must display this data before you print.

3. Choose File | Print to display the "Print Wizard dialog: Select Objects tab".

   
   
   Text description of the illustration share4.gif

4. Use the "Print Wizard dialog: Select Objects tab" to specify which parts of the workbook to print.

   For example, you might want to print only the current worksheet and its graph, or you might want to print all worksheets in the workbook.

   Hint: If you print all the worksheets in a workbook, make sure that each worksheet currently displays the combination of page items that you want.

5. If you are printing graphs, use the "Print Wizard dialog: Define Graph tab" to specify graph options.

   
   
   Text description of the illustration prnwiz2.gif

   For example, you might want to preserve the graph's height and width ratio, or print worksheet titles.

6. If the worksheet contains parameters, you can restrict the data that you print by entering a parameter value on "Print Wizard dialog: Edit Parameter Values tab").

   For example, you might want to print data for a single year, or print data for all years.

7. Use the "Print Wizard dialog: Supervise tab" to choose whether or not to supervise the print to confirm warning messages.

   
   
   Text description of the illustration share3.gif

   For example, in Supervised mode, if you exceed the maximum number of rows allowed in a query, a warning message is displayed. You can confirm this warning by clicking OK or click Cancel to stop the process.

8. Click Finish to display the operating system's Print dialog, select printer options as required, and start the print job.

   For example, you might change the default printer, paper orientation, or scaling options (for more information, see "About printing options and scaling").

   Discoverer prints the report to the device selected.

How to print Discoverer data to PDF files

Discoverer enables you to print Discoverer data such as worksheets and graphs to PDF files. For example, you might want to e-mail a report to a client who uses PDF files as a cross-platform information sharing solution.

Note: You must have Adobe Acrobat installed to print to a PDF file.

To print Discoverer data to PDF files:

1. Follow the instructions in "How to print Discoverer data" until the operating system's Print dialog is displayed.

2. In the operating system's Print dialog, select Portable document format (PDF) from the printer list.

3. Follow the instructions to save the PDF file.

You can now open the PDF file in an Adobe Acrobat reader.

Notes

• You can also print to a postscript file from the operating system's Print dialog. If you have Acrobat Distiller installed, you can convert the postscript file to a PDF file.