SageForum for UK versions of Sage 50- Help and support.

Hi,

Am posting on here as you guys seem to know your stuff, and have had no joy getting Sage to resolve this niggling problem with report designer. Apologies for the essay that follows below, but it is difficult to explain the problem in words, especially as I don't know all the correct terminology!!

Until last year we used Sage 50 Accts Pro 2008 (v14) for many years with no problems. During this time I had created several "customised" invoice, POP, SOP and Statement layouts to avoid the need for pre-printed stationery. Well, I say "created", but all I did was modify the standard Sage layouts (e.g. INVPRCA4) by adding text boxes and box elements to create all the text and outline features that are normally pre-printed on the stationery. To achieve a large, fixed size "box" outline around the body (line items) of each layout, I expanded the depth of the top header (INVOICE_NUMBER.header) by dragging the divider bar down the screen, drew the box at the full size required, then re-sized the header back up to its original height, so that it finished just below the body headings. I have attached the invoice layout file and a PDF example of how it outputs. All was OK until we "upgraded" to Sage 2012 (v18) late last year. When I subsequently opened one of my layouts in the new Report Designer I found that as soon as I tried to edit the size or content of the top header, the bottom bar of the header instantly snapped to the bottom edge of the large box element, and report designer would not allow me to reduce the height of the top header back to where it was. I have tried everything I can think of, but I can't find a way to make any changes to my "2008" layouts unless I get rid of the box around the invoice line items.

Any ideas what is going on? Please tell me it is something simple!!

N.B. I am running a mix of Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 machines, and have the latest versions of Sage 50(18.1.0.20) and Report Designer (1.3.2011.30) installed on all of them.

Thanks in advance for your help, Graham.

Looks like you had managed to create a header section with an overlap.

This must have been a bug in the earlier version.

The way to get around this is to create a template. This is a layout which sits "behind" the invoice and can include vertical elements watermarks and all that sort of stuff as it is overlaid on the rest of the report.

It is a great way to do things, you can make a single template layout which is the equivalent of your letter head with a bunch of grids on it, you can then use the same template for PO's, Invoices and so on, make a copy strip off the grids and you have a letterhead template for statements, letters ...