Open Book reports are generated in either PDF or.CSV file formats. PDF is optimized for printing and easy viewing. CSV is optimized for data analysis. Here are a few steps to make viewing and printing of CSV files a little easier.
We make CSV files available because it is useful for data analysis including sorting, totaling, subtotals and more. You can open a CSV file in almost any spreadsheet or database application including Microsoft Excel and Open Office Calc. Before printing (which is not recommended because of the amount of paper you will use) we recommend a few steps. The steps outlined below are from Microsoft Excel, but will be similar in other applications.
Set Column Width (for Better Viewing or Printing)
In the generated report all column widths are the same. This means that the text in some of the columns exceeds the width of the column.
- Open spreadsheet
- Double-click on the column separators (this will automatically size the width to the amount of text in the column)
Set for One Page Wide Printing
If you don’t set printing to go only one page wide, you will end up with a printout that as some of the columns on one page and some on another page. This can make it very difficult to match up the pages. On the sample used to make this write-up, the default printing had the columns Department, Card Holder, Transaction Date and Amount on pages 1 through 17 and Vendor on pages 18 through 34.
Excel 2010 & 2007
- Set Column Width as described above
- Page Layout Tab
- Scale to Fit Section
- Select Width: 1 page