During my time in the partner channel, I worked with a number of consultants who had a number of problems customising reports with Report Writer.

One of the problems was an inability to access desired data because a valid table relationship could not be established. This could be due to the source table not containing all the key fields needed, the target table's key using constant values not stored in the data, or data type mismatches for the key fields. 

Another issue with creating a table relationship that can occur is that a different table relationship between the two tables already exists. For example, from the Customer Master (RM_Customer_MSTR) table to the Customer Master Address (RM_Customer_MSTR_ADDR) table, there are 4 possible valid one to one relationships, using the Primary, Ship To, Bill To or Statement Address IDs as well as the one to many relationship.  Only one relationship can exist in the system between two tables and in this case it is the one to many relationship.

NOTE: If you are registered for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) you can access any data as long as you can create a SQL query to retrieve it based…

I have seen a number of occasions where a consultant has been asked to add a paragraph of text to a graphic report and has found it almost impossible to get the text to display nicely in both screen and printer outputs. 

For example: a Purchasing Terms and Conditions section on a Purchase Order.

The reason is that static text fields are limited to 79 characters and so to enter more than 79 characters on a line you would have to place more than one static text field on a line.  The problem is that the spacing when laying out the report might differ from the spacing when the…

The following Report Writer and VBA example demonstrates how data from any SQL table can pulled into a report regardless of the product the table is related to.  This technique can also be used when it is not possible to create the table relationship needed to add the report in the Report Writer. It works as long as you can create a query that will uniquely select the data you need based on the data on the report or from the already linked tables.

This example is based on the Manual Payments Posting Journal and MC Manual Payments Posting…

The following Report Writer example demonstrates how it is possible to show different logo images on a report based on a defined condition. 

The Report Writer was used to create a custom report which has two logos on it.  Then each logo covered with a string conditional calculated field, which…

One of biggest issues people have with the Microsoft Dynamics GP Report Writer is not being…

I often get told that it is impossible to customize a report which uses a temporary table, and in particular a temporary table which uses single fields for multiple purposes. While I admit that these reports are more challenging to customize they are far from impossible.

Usually, the temporary tables use…

This is a page to provide links to Report Writer related articles and materials.

Troublesho…

If you have ever wondered why the Microsoft Dynamics GP Report Writer limits you to 32Kb (32,767 bytes) when adding images, this post should hopefully explain the reasons.

The most important point to note is that the 32Kb limit is for an uncompressed bitmap version of the image.  So if you have a compressed image (gif, jpg, etc.) that is 32Kb, it is not going to fit as it will be larger than 32Kb once uncompressed.  This is because Dexterity stores the resource as an uncompressed bitmap when it is pasted into the system.

Perhaps the answer can be found by looking at history of Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains).

Since the earlier versions supported Macs as well as…

I have been asked many times how to have different company logos and details on invoice documents depending on the company you are logged into.

Changing company details is easy as they are stored as Global fields and can be added to a report from the Globals section.  It is the logos that are more difficult.

If you are using SOP have four companies or less, it is possible to use the four document types (blank,…

This Report Writer function is another Standard GP Function, which works very similar to function RW_GetNoteText ().

This function is available to retrieve the Comment Text associated with a Comment ID. This particular function is very helpful when we use Comments extensively and create…