LibreOffice Base Report - modifying printout

[andrejv555]

Hi.

I’m using LibreOffice 7.3.6.2 on Win10.

I created a product database in Base and now I’d like to make a product catalog from the data in the database. I made a report and grouped it by Area and Product groups. The result is:

Area 1
Group A
Image 1A_1 Product description 1A_1
Image 1A_2 Product description 1A_2
…
Image 1A_n Product description 1A_n
Group B
Image 1B_1 Product description 1B_1
Image 1B_2 Product description 1B_2
…
Image 1B_n Product description 1B_n
etc…

In order to save space I’d like to have the following layout:

Area 1
Group A
Image 1A_1 Image 1A_2 Image 1A_n
Product description 1A_1
Product description 1A_2
…
Product description 1A_n
Group B
Image 1B_1 Image 1B_2 Image 1B_n
Product description 1B_1
Product description 1B_2
…
Product description 1B_n
etc…

In other words I’d like to transpose one part of the table and diplay images in rows rather than in columns.

How could this be done?

Many thanks for your suggestions.

[RobertG]

One row in the report has to be one row in data source of the report. So all images you need must be available together in one row of your query. And it should only be one row, because this row has to be in a separate group to get the descriptions you need in section “Detail”.

Another possibility is to set image1 and description 1 together with image 2 and description 2 into one row of the data source. So you could get a report showing two columns. Might be it saves space also.

[andrejv555]

Thank you for prompt reply.

I tried by selecting 3-columnar report type but it doesn’t look good because product images are of equal heights and product descriptions are of different legths and it looks messy.

I also tried to create a separate group for images and include it in the grouping section. I’ve got this report:

Area 1
_Group A
__Group A Product images
___Image 1A_1
___Image 1A_2
___…
___Image 1A_n
__Group A Descriptions
___Product description 1A_1
___Product description 1A_2
___…
___Product description 1A_n

So, I’ve got one section only with images and another section only with product data. The final solution now would be to transpose the section with images. I tried do to this in Writer but it doesn’t support transposing tables. I also tried to make the report in Calc but images are not displayed there…

[RobertG]

Screenshots of an executed report would help to understand what you are missing.

[andrejv555]

Hi.

Following your explanation that one row in the report has to be one row in data source of the report I adjusted the imput data in the following fashion:

===========================================================+
Prod.Area + Prod.Group + Item.n + Image1 + Image2 + Image3 +
===========================================================+
1 + A + Item1
1 + A + Item2
1 + A + Item3
1 + Aimg + 1 + p1.jpg + p2.jpg + p3.jpg

All images for the product group in the data source are now in one row.
In the report design I inserted multiple image controls, positioned them next to each other and linked them to appropriate columns.
Now I’ve got the desired result, where images are displayed in coulmns and data in rows.

The final thing that needs to be taken care of are the empty image boxes. Some sections have only one image others have more (up to 25). As a consequence some image boxes remain empty. They show up in the report as empty rows. How can I suppress those?

[RobertG]

You couldn’t suppress the empty boxes for images. So there should only be one row for the images in the Detail section. All content for the table will be content in a group footer.

Might be a report created by macro in Writer (Table in a *.ott) will work better for you. See Example for getting images from Base to Writer.

[andrejv555]

I managed to solve this issue by deleting empty rows in Writer with macro. Detailed instructions are here.