Resizing and Aligning Fields

As fields are added to the report, you may need to resize them to ensure that the contents of the fields will fit into the space allocated by the editor. You will also want to align fields to each other horizontally and vertically to produce an attractive appearance.

Resizing Objects

Selecting an object (left mouse click) displays the boundary of the object with resizing handles. You can increase/decrease the size of the field by dragging the appropriate handle. You can also click on the field and drag it to another location.

This image shows the border surrounding an object when the object is selected.

For additional resizing options, right-click on the field and select Edit. The Edit dialog box will appear shown in the figure below. Checking the Autosize width and Autostretch height check boxes will adjust the size of the field to fit the contents of the data, if necessary.

Edit Text Field dialog. Within this dialog, selections for rotation, font, color, alignment, word wrap, autosize width, and autostretch height exist.

Resizing Bands

Bands can be resized using the same methods as resizing objects. Click anywhere within the band (but not on a field) and the boundary of the band will be shown with the sizing handles. The handles can be used to adjust the height of the band.

You can also right-click within the band, and select Options. The following dialog box appears where you can specify the band height as well as other options.

Options dialog with various options for resizing and positioning bands.

Aligning Fields

When repositioning a field by dragging it, Argos will display blue horizontal or vertical alignment guidelines to assist you in aligning a field with other fields. In the figure below, note the blue vertical alignment line (to the left of the “R” in REGION) that appears when moving the REGION title to align it with the region_name field.

This image shows the alignment guidelines that are displayed when aligning fields.

There are also alignment icons within the Band Report Editor Toolbar (shown below) that can be used to align multiple fields to each other. The methods for selecting multiple objects are described below.

This image shows the icons within the alignment toolbar used to select alignment options

Icon	Usage
	Align by left sides
	Align by horizontal centers
	Align by horizontal center of parent
	Stretch to be same horizontal size
	Align by right sides
	Align by top sides
	Align by vertical centers
	Stretch to be same vertical size
	Align by bottom sides
	Align by vertical center of parent

Selecting and Aligning Multiple Fields

Multiple fields can be selected by depressing the shift key and clicking on the desired field(s). Each selected field will then be surrounded by a rectangle with small gray boxes on the corners. These fields can be moved or aligned as a group. In the figure below, all fields are surrounded by the small gray boxes, indicating that they are grouped together.

This image shows how fields are bordered when selected as a group.

Multiple fields can also be selected by depressing the Ctrl key and dragging the cursor to create a rectangle around the fields that you want to include. All objects enclosed within the box will be individually surrounded by the small gray boxes described above and can be moved or aligned as a group. The rectangle shown in the figure below (created by dragging the cursor) shows seven fields that have been selected and will be treated as a group.

This image shows how to group fields using the control key and dragging the cursor over the fields.

When using the alignment tools, select one object, then select additional objects to be aligned using either method described above. All objects will be aligned to the first object selected.