How to Display More Columns in a ClarisWorks Database

This is a portion of an article that originally appeared in the ClarisWorks Journal, the monthly publication of the ClarisWorks Users Group, Box 701010, Plymouth, MI 48170; (313) 454-1969; Fax: (313) 454-1965. Copyright ClarisWorks Users Group; reprinted with permission.

This information was provided by Claris Corporation on 16 March 1998, and incorporated into Apple Computer's Tech Info Library.

Q: As a former AppleWorks user, I like to examine my data in a tables format. ClarisWorks lets me display my data in columns, but does not let me scroll all the way across the fields. Is there some way to do this?

A: Viewing your data in columnar format is convenient. As you discovered, ClarisWorks lets you set up a columnar display of your data.

To get a columnar display, choose New Layout from the Layout Menu, and select Columnar Report. Then choose the fields you want to appear in the display by moving them into the Field Order list and click on Move.

The trick to setting up a wide set of columns is to tell ClarisWorks to format the layout to fit on a wide sheet of paper. To do that, go to the File Menu, select Page Setup and then select the Landscape (horizontal) orientation for printing. Now the horizontal scroll bar will become active and you can scroll to the right to display the remaining columns.

If you still can't get all your columns in the layout, go back to the Page Setup in the File menu and tell ClarisWorks that you want to print in landscape mode on US Legal paper. Since US Legal paper is 14 inches long, reports formatted to print in landscape mode on legal paper let you scroll left and right over almost a 14-inch area.

Note: ClarisWorks applies your current page setup to all your existing layouts. When you switch to landscape mode, some layouts will appear cut off at the bottom when you do a Page View. However, your layouts are still intact and will be correct when you reset the page orientation to vertical.

You can remind yourself of the correct page setup for each layout by adding the suffix ".HRZ" to the name of any horizontal layout and ".VRT" to vertical layouts. That will help you remember to go to the Page Setup Window and change the orientation of the "paper" on your screen.

Note: ClarisWorks 4.0 can do this simply by choosing List from the Layout menu.

Too much space between graphics and wrapped text
If there is too much white space between a graphic and text wrapped around it in your word processing document, you may need to change your paragraph line spacing units. Choose Paragraph from the Format menu. A dialog box appears that allows you to modify paragraph spacing attributes for the currently selected paragraph(s). In the pop-up menu next to the Line Spacing setting, the default unit for adjusting line spacing is "li" (lines). Using any other units, such as points or inches, for setting line spacing will result in a large amount of white space between graphics and the wrapped text.

Solution
Set the Line Spacing units back to lines in the Paragraph dialog box. You can still flexibly change line spacing by specifying 1.5 lines, 2.0 lines, 2.5 lines, etc.; however, the smallest fraction of a line you can specify is a half (0.5) line.