Considerations for Creating Reports

There are a few guidelines you can use when designing and creating reports:

Use label controls to identify, attract, and focus attention on specific information and areas of the report.
Use appropriate spacing and positioning of information for enhancing organization, improving clarity and reducing clutter in the report, and leading the reader's eye to parts of the report. In general, the reader's eye travels through the top, center, right, and then the left parts of the screen or page.
Consider the type of output you intend to create when planning your basic design.

For example, if you plan to provide on-screen display, do not make your readers scroll through information. If you cannot display the information in your report in the length of a single screen, consider reorganizing the information in a different way.

If your users will print the report, consider whether they all have color printers before using color to display significant distinctions between records or fields, such as using red to distinguish negative numbers.
Test your reports with widely varied sample records, just as you would test forms and other parts of your application. Ensure that missing data elements have appropriate defaults or placeholders, and that unusually long values in data fields are not cut off.

See Also