How To Center Text

Related Information

Using Variables To Center A Heading See Also

Examples & Tutorials

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To center text in your reports, use the @= symbol before and after the text that you want to center.

Remember to use [ < ] to remove trailing spaces from the field that you are centering or they will be included.

For example:

@=de.na<@= will center the Debtor's name and trim any blank spaces from the end of the name.

The @= symbol can only be used with a SINGLE field or variable on a line.

To create a centered heading for a letter, for instance, you would use variables to "build" the items in your heading.

Using Variables To Center A Heading

To use more than one field or textual item in each line of your heading, it is necessary to use variables. You need a variable for each item of information and a variable that combines these items into each line of your heading.

Let's say that you are creating a centered heading that contains your company name, address, city, state, zip code, phone and fax. You would like it to be centered, as illustrated.

Company Name Street Number and Address City, State, Zip Code Phone: Phone Number Fax: Fax Number

This requires the following steps:

You have to be familiar with the use of variables and math with database fields to perform these steps.

1. Create these variables for the parts of your heading that require more than one reference on a line.

@varPhone* = "Phone: "
@varFax* = " Fax: "
@varPhoneLine* = @(varPhone+cd.ph+varFax+cd.fa)

Remember that the [ * ] symbol indicates that you are creating a variable to hold a string. In this instance, we are declaring and initializing the variables in the same step.

This code creates variables to handle text and spacing. Then a new variable holds all the information for one line. Since the other lines of the Company information are taken from the Company Details form, each line is only one reference to a single field.

2. Create the heading, using the field codes and the variable.

@cd.na
@cd.ad
@cd.ad2
@varPhoneLine

3. Use the @= symbol to center your heading.

@=@cd.na<@=
@=@cd.ad<@=
@=@cd.ad2<@=
@=@varPhoneLine@=

It is not necessary to trim spaces from the variable since Collect! does this automatically when you build the @varPhoneLine variable.