Sort Band Header
This band is used to print a header above a group. Let's examine a real world situation for using a sort band header.
Let's use a mailing list as an example. Your organization has members all over the United States in each of the fifty states. When your mailing list prints you want the output to be nicely formatted with a title above each state to be make locating people in a specific state very quick and easy. An example output without a group header may resemble:
AL Bob McKinley
AL Chuck Connors
AL David Spinley
AZ Alan Sockworth
AZ Frank Sputz
AZ Henry Rollins
And an example output with a fancy sort band header:
____________
State: AL
____________
AL Bob McKinley
AL Chuck Connors
AL David Spinley
____________
State: AZ
____________
AZ Alan Sockworth
AZ Frank Sputz
AZ Henry Rollins
Obviously a group header can be as simple or fancy as required. Different font types and colors can be used to help separate groups of data as needed. Aside from bring far more visually appealing for the user, they also aid in locating data that is grouped together much more efficiently.
A group header can contain a mixture of text and database field information. Use the frame charactistics dialogue box to help you build the group header. The above example frame contents would resemble:
The actual report band would resemble:
