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Report Output Formats


There are several ways to generate reports so that the output is suitable for different purposes.  Sometime you may just want to view a report on the screen to see if the formatting is what you want.  Other times you will want to create a report that can be sent to another person as part of an e-mail message, or to incorporate into a book or other document.  Below are the various output options for a report.  Some reports have all of these options available, others do not offer them all.

Print Preview
All reports can be generated and viewed on the computer screen before being printed or otherwise transformed into a different format.  To preview a report, click the icon.  The Print Preview window appears where you can view the entire report, which might consist of many pages.  (See Print Preview for a description of all the options available from this screen.)

Print to the Printer
Any report can be sent directly to the printer after being generated.  To print a report, click the icon.  The report is immediately sent to your default printer.  You can also print a report to your printer from the Print Preview window where you have many options as to which pages are printed.  (See Print Preview for a description of all the options available from this screen.)

PDF
This is Adobe's® Portable Document Format (PDF).  It is the open de facto standard for electronic document distribution worldwide. Adobe PDF is a universal file format that preserves all the fonts, formatting, graphics, and color of any source document. PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated, and printed exactly as intended by anyone with free Adobe Acrobat® Reader® software.  If you don't have the Acrobat Reader you can get a free copy at:

   http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html

This format is great for sending a formatted file/report to other people that includes all the pictures, etc, but the end readers can't edit the file or export it to their genealogy programs.

(This is a Deluxe Edition feature)  To produce a PDF file you must first generate the report into the Print Preview window.  The next step is to click Create PDF along the right side of the window.  This prompts for a file name and location to save the PDF file.  After it has been saved, you can send this type of file in an e-mail message as an attachment.  (See How to Send Files Via E-mail for more information.)

RTF - Rich-Text Format
This file type evolved to allow transferring heavily formatted documents from one type of word processor to another. Most word-processors will open an RTF file and show it in the original layout, as created, even though it was made in a different word processor. In Legacy, it's handy to use this when you want to use your word processor to edit or modify the file, such as in when compiling a book.  Index and Table of Content codes are even embedded in the RTF file so that your word processor can generate these items and refer to the correct page numbers.

Most text oriented reports in Legacy offer the RTF output format.  Other reports that include a lot of formatting with lines and boxes are not suited for this type of output.

To produce this type of report output format, click the option near the bottom-right corner of the reports that support this output type.  When you do, the Print icon turns into a icon.  Clicking this icon prompts you for a file name and location for saving the rich text format file.  It will have a file extension of .rtf.  When the file has been saved, Legacy offers to open it with your default word processor if you want to view it or work with it.

RTF files can be sent via e-mail as an attachment.  (See How to Send Files Via E-mail for more information.)

There are a number of different RTF file specifications in existence. The ability of a Word Processing program to interpret the RTF files produced by Legacy and duplicate the report format, generate Indexes and Table of Contents etc. will vary from word processor to word processor as well as between different versions of each.

HTML - Hyper-Text Markup Language
This is the basic language for creating web pages or pages for viewing in a web browser. If you want to post a page to the web for people to view, this is a good way to do it.  Legacy can also generate entire Web sites for you.  (See Web Page Creation for more information on how to do this.)  

To produce this type of report output format, click the option near the bottom-right corner of the reports that support this output type.  When you do, the Print icon turns into a icon.  Clicking this icon prompts you for a file name and location for saving the HTML format file.  It will have a file extension of .htm.  When the file has been saved, Legacy offers to open it with your default web browser if you want to view it.

HTML files can be sent via e-mail as an attachment.  (See How to Send Files Via E-mail for more information.)

Text Files
These are plain text files with no added formatting. They are great for e-mailing and other uses.

To produce this type of report output format, click the option near the bottom-right corner of the reports that support this output type.  When you do, the Print icon turns into a icon.  You can also specify a report width by changing the number in the input box to the right .  Clicking prompts you for a file name and location for saving the text format file.  It will have a file extension of .txt.  When the file has been saved, Legacy offers to open it with your default text editor if you want to view it or work with it.

Text files can be sent via e-mail as an attachment or simply copied into the body of the e-mail message.  (See How to Send Files Via E-mail for more information.)

Screen Dumps
Sometimes you may just want to capture what is showing on your computer screen at the moment.  This may be a particular input screen, pedigree view, picture, or report screen showing something of interest that you want to share with someone else.  There are several ways to do this:
  • Windows PrintScreen
    You can capture the entire computer screen to the Windows clipboard by pressing the PrintScreen button on your keyboard.  This places the entire screen graphic on the Windows clipboard.  If you press Alt-PrintScreen, the currently active window is placed on the clipboard as a bitmap file.  Once it is there you can paste it in various places.  For example, you can open up Microsoft Paint and paste it there and print it or even make changes to it.  There are also many other graphics programs that you can paste it into, some of which will let you convert it into a different file format, like jpeg, that takes up much less room.  You can also paste the screen dump into your word processor to include in a document or just to print.  
  • Screen Capture Programs
    There are other programs that let you capture the current screen, active window, or portion of a screen and either print it immediately to the printer or keep it on the Windows clipboard.  If you search for screen capture in your browser you can find many programs that do this.  Some of these are free and others require a small fee.
  • Legacy Reports
    When a report is generated in Legacy and viewed in the Print Preview window, you can load the current report page onto the Windows clipboard by clicking Copy Page to Clipboard.  When you do, Legacy asks if you want to create a Small, Medium, or Large sized image.  Large images are between 1 and 2 megabytes in size, Medium are between ½ and 1 megabyte, and Small range from about 200 kilobytes to 500 kilobytes (1/2 megabyte).   The image can be left on the Windows clipboard or saved as a graphic file on disk.  After it has been saved, you can send this type of file in an e-mail message as an attachment.  (See How to Send Files Via E-mail for more information.)


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