VISUAL QUICKPRO GUIDE FileMaker Pro 7 Advanced FOR WINDOWS AND MACINTOSH [Electronic resources]

Exporting Summary Data

The report described in the preceding section may be useful to you when printed out. But suppose you want to use the totals in another program?

Using the Export Records command, you can create a file that contains the same subtotals that are in the printed report. This file can be opened in a spreadsheet or word processor, or imported into your accounting software for invoicing. Once you have it in another application, the data is completely editable.

To export summary data

1 .

Make sure you''ve sorted your data properly by following the procedure in "To sort data for sub-summary reports" earlier in this chapter.

2 .

Choose File > Export Records. When the Export Records to File dialog box appears, choose a file type from the Save as type (Windows)/Type (Mac) drop-down menu (Figure 5.57). In this example, it will be a spreadsheet, so we''ll choose WK1 (Windows) or WKS (Mac). Type a name for the file, choose a destination folder, and click Save.

3 .When the Specify Field Order for Export dialog box appears, the fields in your layout will appear in the Field Export order box, in the sort order you used (Figure 5.58). If you want to have the numbers formatted to match the current layout (like with a comma as a thousands separator for numbers), check the "Apply current layout''s data formatting to exported data" check box.

4 .Check a sort field in the "Group by" box to export only summarized data without the individual records from the body part (Figure 5.59).

5 .If you are exporting to a file that will be read in another operating system, select that system from the "Output file character set" drop-down list.

6 .

Click Export to save the exported file.

7 .If you open the exported file in Excel, it won''t display column headers. You''ll have to add them manually (Figure 5.60).

Tips

If you''re going to use the exported file in a word processor, choose Tab-Separated Text.

As with Finds, after you export a file, you can create an Export Records script to re-create the same field exports in the future. ScriptMaker will show the same settings as the last manual export when you choose the Export Records script step.

If you need to maintain the field labels as column headings in your exported file, try exporting your files in either Merge or DBF format. If you use one of these formats, be sure to check the labels carefully once you open the exported file. Merge brings over the labels, but replaces any spaces with underscores. DBF maintains the spaces, but has a 10-character maximum limit per label.

FileMaker lets you sort with a mouse click in Table View. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the header of the field you want to sort by. Choose Ascending or Descending and your database is sorted by that field (Figure 5.61).