Make sure you save your report very frequently. If you make a change that goes wrong, click the Actions tab, Discard Changes and your report will return to its previously saved state.
Plan your report content/layout page by page before you start building. Layout does not flow across pages in report Builder i.e. widgets can get pushed off the bottom of the page if you add content above them.
When designing your report you need to consider the data that is going to appear in it and how this will affect the layout. For example, if you include the area being profiled (using the feature name variable) in a text widget you need to make sure there is enough space for long area names to appear. It’s not a bad idea to view the area with the longest name while you design the report. Likewise, if you are displaying indicator data within your widgets some areas may have very long numbers or text which may affect the display.
Use widget borders, spacing and anchors to help control the layout of your page. Extending borders can be especially useful to helps space widgets and force them onto new lines. Margins can have negative values too which can be useful if you’re trying to get e.g. text to appear in the header of a page.
Including Break lines can be a useful method of dividing up content on your page. These can also be used to add bands of colour to your report by setting the width.
The text style ‘paragraph (no padding)’ is useful for ensuring that text appears right next to the border of the widget.
If you want to add a line of colour that only goes part way across the page a text widget with a background colour set can be used to achieve this. Just include a space as your text value.
Coloured Text boxes can be useful for helping to highlight blocks of content on your page.
Use different size fonts and colours to highlight key messages. You can also include indicator values and names within your text.
To get text to wrap round e.g. an image or chart you can nest other widgets inside a text widget by dragging them into the text widget
