Groups allow you to group database information in reports. Defining groups allows you to add white space to your reports, avoid printing redundant data, perform conditional processing on variables that change, and print subtotals. If you defined group breaks when you created your query, they appear in your default report layout.
To modify or add group breaks:
Display your report in the Layout window and select Report, then Group Breaks.
The Group Breaks dialog box is displayed. Any group breaks you defined in the query appear under Current Group.
The Group Breaks page in the Query Builder only appears the first time you access the Query Builder. If you exit and then re-enter the Query Builder, the Group Breaks Query Builder page does not appear. To change the group breaks as you are laying out your report, choose Report, then Group Breaks as just described.
Add or remove group breaks as desired.
Each break has an associated Group Header and Group Summary section in the report layout. Immediately before a new break occurs, the contents of the Group Header print, and before the next break occurs, the contents of the Group Summary print. Use the Group Header to enter heading information that will print before each group, and use the Group Summary to enter summary information for the group.
For example, if you had a report that listed products sales for each customer, you could place an object for the Customer Name column in the Group Header for Name, give it a bold 14pt font, precede it with a text object that says "Product Sales for Customer", and place a horizontal line on top of the object. In this example, every time a break occurs on the Customer Name column, the Group Header will print a horizontal line followed by "Product Sales for Customer: xxxx."
To print a summary of the records for each group, you could place calculated fields in the Group Summary that calculate the number of sales, the total sale amount, and the average sale for each customer.
When you define group breaks, you can generate a table of contents based on the group breaks. See Creating a Table of Contents for more information.