How To Use Quick Printing Features

Using Quick Print

Wherever you are in Collect! you can pull down the Print menu and choose Reports and Letters. The Print Report list will be shown. The reports in this list change depending on where you are and what form you have open. However, you will always see " Quick Print" in the list of reports, no matter where you are when you open the Print Report list.

Choose Quick Print to display the Print Report form. When you have made your choices for printing options, choose Print. You will be asked whether you want to "Print all details in the report." Your response to this depends on what you want to print, as detailed below.

If you select the Print button on the Print Report list, you will get a Quick Print of the Print Report list itself. You must actually select Quick Print to set your printing options and print the details or list that you want.

Lists

Quick Print prints a report about whatever you are looking at. If you are looking at a list, you can print out the list. Most of the time, lists have a lot of details that you see when you open an item, for instance, a Debtor.

When you choose Quick Print for this sort of list, you will be asked if you want Collect! to "Print all details in the report". Only choose 'Yes' if you really need them because this can be a very lengthy process. Collect! takes "ALL" very seriously.

You can select one item in the list, then choose Quick Print, then choose 'Yes' and you can get all the details of a particular item. To select an item use the arrow keys to scroll onto it and press the spacebar. You can choose multiple records by similarly tagging records with the spacebar and print their details if you wish.

When printing a list, Quick Print automatically totals ALL numeric fields.

Since dates and some other items are numeric (even though it may not appear so on the screen) these items will show totals. Ignore these totals unless you understand what they represent.

Customizing List Views

By default, when viewing a list, you will see that Collect! displays only a few of the many fields available on any given form. You can customize this list view to hide or show the fields you need for your Quick Print reports. You can also rearrange the order of the columns in the list. Quick Print will output results according to your custom settings.

This flexibility makes Quick Print an excellent choice for printing ad hoc in-house reports, or for sending particular account information to your clients, quickly and easily, as needed. Please refer to Help topic, Customizing List Views, for details.

Column Wrapping When Quick Printing

When you Quick Print a list, for example, the Client List, you may find that your columns have "wrapped" and are not spread out across your page or screen. To remedy this, when you are at the Print Report screen, change your Page Width to 132. Then choose Print and your columns will be aligned properly.

Word wrapping and column alignment are handled well automatically when you print via browser. Then you can print the resulting HTML page to your printer to produce a quick but attractive report.

Print Via Browser

Press the Printer Setup button on the Print Report screen to display the Printer Setup dialog. Switch ON Print Via Browser. Then press Exit and you will be back at the Print Report screen. Now you will see a Print Preview choice that wasn't there before. Choose this and press PRINT to view your Quick Print results in HTML format.

Forms

When you choose Quick Print on an open form, for instance a particular Debtor, you have two choices.

1. Choose NO to print a short report of that form's information, with no details. 2. Choose YES to print all details related to the form, such as all contacts, transactions etc.

Report Definitions

Quick Print is very useful for printing the codes for a particular report or letter so that you can refer this when designing your own. You must be on the Report Definition form for the particular letter or report. When asked whether you want all details printed, choose "No".

Reports Output

Quick Print allows you to print using the same choices as regular printing, such as, Printer, Print Preview, File, Screen, Spreadsheet, Browser, Fax and Email. Some of these choices may not be appropriate for the type of data you are printing. You may need to experiment to find the best solution.

Using Batch Printing

You can print batches of letters and reports whenever you are viewing a list. When you display a list and then select a report to print (by using the Print menu, Report and Letters option) you will be asked if you want to print only one record or all records in the current list.

ONE prints the report or letter for only the current record.

ALL prints the letter or report for all records in the list.

CANCEL cancels the print request.

Some reports already perform looping. If you tell these reports to print ALL records in the list, the report will most likely print many more copies of the report than you expect. It may even be stuck in a seemingly endless loop. Choose ONE to be on the safe side if you are unsure.

Manually Printing A Letter

When you are in the Report Body editor, you can press the PRINT button from the top menu in Collect! This will bring up the Reports Output Options form where you can choose your report output settings.

Key combination Ctrl+P will also bring up this menu.

Printing Totals

If a field's result data is too wide in the quick print totals, it will display as ######.

See Also

- How To Print A Sample Report Or Letter
- How To Get Started Creating Reports and Letters