Libreoffice Base Report Builder

[rdods]

I’m running Ubuntu 20.04 and was using the snap version of LO. Everything was working until there was an update and Base was missing the JRE. I looked, and, sure enough, there was no reference to any listed JRE in the advanced settings.

I uninstalled all the LO modules and downloaded the deb version:
Version: 7.6.5.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 60(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 4:7.6.5-0ubuntu0.20.04.1~lo1
Calc: threaded

After this change, Base works EXECPT I cannot run any reports, nor can I create new ones.

How do I fix this?

Thanks for your help.

[RobertG]

Seems there is no Report Builder in this special Ubuntu packages. Have a look if you really installed all packages of LibreOffice.

Better solution: Install original packages from LibreOffice. I’m using OpenSUSE and had problems to use report builder with the internal version of OpenSUSE for a long time. But I have installed also LibreOffice packed by LibreOffice and it works without any problems (in this part …).

[Villeroy]

You create spreadsheet reports with the report builder? Try this instead:

• Open a new spreadsheet
• Hit Ctrl+Shift+F4 for the data source window
• Drag the query or table that represents your report data into the spreadsheet.

This creates a database range that is linked to the source data. In order to update the link, click any cell in that range and call menu:Data>Refresh

Since LO does not use proper default values:

• Click any cell in that range
• menu:Data>Define… select “Import1” which is the name of your database range
• Click “Options” and check
  – “Keep formatting”
  – “Insert or delete cells”

“Keep formatting” means the formatting applied by the spreadsheet component.
“Insert/delete cells” takes care that new cells are inserted when the refreshed data range is bigger than the old one. Likewise a shrinking record set will remove cells accordingly.

This type of report can be used with all spreadsheet features, formulas, charts, conditional formatting etc.

[rdods]

@villeroy Thanks! Working from the query is just fine for what I’m doing.

[rdods]

@RobertG Yes, I uninstalled LO completely and then download from libreoffice.org

There are a few glitches with some of my reports but I believe that may be an incompatibility with the version under which they were created. I’ve seen this before with Base and regenerating reports every now and then is not new for me.

Thanks for your suggestion.