Lines and boxes over sections¶

What is new - 25.1¶

Enhanced Drawing Capabilities: Boxes and Lines Span Multiple Sections!¶

Great news! A highly anticipated feature has been implemented in DataFlex Reports, significantly improving how you can design your reports. Previously, drawing boxes and lines was restricted to a single section, forcing you to break them into multiple segments if you needed them to span across different areas. This was not only cumbersome to create but also incredibly difficult to maintain.

While version 4 introduced page layers that partially addressed this by allowing some overlap, the flexibility for boxes remained limited. Now, with the latest version of DataFlex Reports, you can finally draw a box or a line seamlessly from one section to another!

These multi-section boxes and lines are rendered first when the OCX prints your report. Similar to other objects, you can use the report explorer to manage their layering, allowing you to print them on top of other elements. After the boxes have been rendered, the rest of your report content will be printed.

Flexible Box Continuations and Global Management¶

A powerful new capability allows each box to have an open end at the bottom of a page and continue onto the next, automatically closing when all covered sections are complete. Please note that this "open end" feature is not available when you select rounded corners for your box.

To facilitate future enhancements, newly created boxes and lines are no longer tied to specific sections in the report explorer. Instead, they are now managed at a global level. This change paves the way for upcoming features that will enable you to easily resize lines and boxes across multiple sections.