Profiles enable you to produce the same report detail in different ways. Creating a profile is neither mandatory nor necessary before you start your report design. For example, having designed and printed a report, you can later decide that you need to print the same report in another way.
If the original report was a customer list in customer name sequence, you can decide to produce the same report in customer account number sequence. By creating profiles for the two variations of the same report, you or another user need only specify the profile name to print the required report.
If the original specification for your report is detailed enough to include provisions for different editions of the same report detail, you can create your profiles as an administrative function. (For details, see "Using Administrative Functions", earlier in this chapter.) You can use profiles to create different editions of your report by performing one or more of the following actions.
Changing the sort order.
Changing the selection criteria; for example, you may want to restrict a customer list to those customers in one district.
Creating different groupings of the data; for example, you may want to group your customer list by district in one report but by account number prefix in another report.
The number of group sections is the same for each profile but the Group-by controls of any group section can be different for each profile. For details, see "Creating Groups", later in this chapter.
To access the Profile Properties dialog, perform one of the following actions
Select the New command from the Profiles menu. (Use this command to create a new profile.) The Profile Properties dialog is then displayed with the Profile sheet uppermost. The other sheet tabs are displayed but disabled until a profile name is entered and applied.
Select the Properties command from the Profiles menu. (Use this command to modify an existing profile.) The Profile Properties dialog is then displayed with the Profile sheet uppermost.
Select the Group Properties command, the Sort Order command, or the Selection Criteria command from the Profiles menu. (Use these commands when you are modifying an existing profile and you know the sheet that you want to modify.) The Profile Properties dialog is then displayed, with the relevant sheet uppermost.
The subsections listed in the following table describe the sheets of the Profile Properties dialog.
| Subsections | Describes how to… |
|---|---|
| Using the Profile Sheet | Set or change the profile name and description. |
| Using the Sort Order Sheet | Specify or change the sort sequence. |
| Using the Selection Criteria Sheet | Specify or change selection criteria. |
| Using the Group Sheet | Specify or change the report grouping. |