Cognos Analytics

Cognos Analytics

Connect, learn, and share with thousands of IBM Cognos Analytics users! 

 View Only
Expand all | Collapse all

Output to PDF - how to enforce consistent column width and height

  • 1.  Output to PDF - how to enforce consistent column width and height

    Posted Fri May 01, 2020 08:02 AM
    ​We have some reports that are output to PDF format. The client wants to have these reports scanned and archived by an imaging software. The imaging software requires PDF column data to always start in the exact same location on the page with the exact same width.  We have tried everything possible to force consistent column start location and widths, but to no avail. Cognos will not truncate data and it adjust the column widths and height to accommodate different data.

    One answer is to use csv format instead of PDF. But the client is resisting this. Anybody have any suggestions on how to enforce consistent column width and height?

    Starting to think that the only way to do this 100% is to find the underlying data size - say character 30 - and populate the data with 30 'W' to totally find the largest possible column width (W is usually the widest character). And then make the column that width. But obviously you will quickly run out of space on the page for your other columns.

    ------------------------------
    brenda grossnickle
    BI Programmer Analyst
    FIS
    ------------------------------

    #CognosAnalyticswithWatson


  • 2.  RE: Output to PDF - how to enforce consistent column width and height

    Posted Wed May 06, 2020 11:55 AM
    Did you try to allow horizontal pagination and then fix the width of each column, Text property to set justify? You may also try to use Table within List and have fixed size  if it works in your scenario.

    ------------------------------
    Buddhi Gupta
    ------------------------------