Tagging an R&R Report

R&R Report Writer® stores documents in .rrw or .rsw files, which are data-driven documents. A data-driven document is one in which you insert placeholders where you want information from the fields in your database to appear within the report. If your database has a field containing e-mail addresses, you can send different sections of a report to selected e-mail addresses. For example, if you are sending invoices, you might insert the e-mail address of your clients' account payable contact into the invoice page header so that each invoice is sent to the correct client contact person. All of the pages associated with the same e-mail address will be combined into a single PDF file.

Instead of using a database field to supply the e-mail address, you may optionally use a text field for the e-mail address if you always send a report to the same e-mail address, for example you may have a report you always send to JohnSmith@SmithCompany.com. Another alternative is to use a calculated field to supply the e-mail address if you have special requirements for computing an e-mail address, for example if-then logic to select from among several e-mail addresses for each client. In any case, the easiest way to insert a PDF-eXPLODE tag into an R&R report is using a calculated field.

If your report does not already have a Page Header band, insert one. On the Insert menu Click Create Band Line. Click Select Band, leave the default band as Page Header and click OK.
Create a calculated field that includes the field with the e-mail address. On the Calculations menu click Calculated Fields and then click New. Enter a field name such as PDFeXPLODE and then enter an expression such as the following example, where you will replace e_mailAddr with the actual name of the field in your report that contains the e-mail address. When you are finished, click OK and Close.

"<pdfexplode>" + e_mailAddr + "</pdfexplode>"

If you are using a Message ID Tag, for example invoice, then your tag would look as follows:

"<pdfexplode>invoice#" + e_mailAddr + "</pdfexplode>"

Place the cursor in the upper left corner of the report at the beginning of the first Page Header line and insert the field you just created. On the Insert menu click Field. In the Insert Field dialog box, click Insert and Close.
Make the text field as wide as necessary for the entire PDF-eXPLODE tag to appear in its entirety for the longest e-mail address. Click and drag the right handle of the text field all the way to the right margin.
A tag must fit entirely on a single line. Apply a small font size to minimize the risk of a tag not fitting entirely on a single line. Select the text field and click Font on the Format menu. Enter 6 for the Size and click OK.
The entire tag must have a standard Windows font applied to it, such as Arial or Times New Roman. Select the text field and click Font on the Format menu. Set Font to Arial and click OK.
You may change the color of the tag to white to make it invisible in the resulting document. Select the text field and click Font on the Format menu. Set Color to White and click OK.