Organizing data in groups

Sorting data makes a report more readable and useful. Sorting is typically only one of the tasks you perform when organizing data in a report. It is common for reports to present data that is organized into meaningful groups, especially reports that contain large amounts of data. Consider the task of listing every item a corporation owns, along with information such as the category, purchase price, purchase date, inventory code, location, and supplier. If a report presents all these items in an unorganized list or sorted list, it is not possible to determine how much the corporation spends, for example, on office furniture or computer hardware because this information cannot be easily calculated. The report cannot provide information such as which year had the most purchases, or which items are located in a field office and which items are in the warehouse.

To organize all this information into a useful inventory report, you create data groups. Data groups contain related data rows. For example, you can create a report that lists items by category—all office furniture in one group, all computer hardware in another group, all computer software in a third group, and so on. For each group, you can calculate aggregate data, such as the total purchase price or count of items in a group. Organizing data in groups makes it easier to compare and analyze information.

Compare the reports in Figure 5-8 and Figure 5-9. The report in Figure 5-8 displays customer information in a simple list. The data rows are sorted by country. Notice the repeated country names in the first column.

Figure 5-8

Report with data sorted by country

The report in Figure 5-9 shows the same data. Unlike the previous report, this report groups the rows by country, removing the repeated entries.

Figure 5-9

Report with data grouped by country

A report that groups data provides a more effective way to view data. When you group data, you can:

Add subtotals, counts, averages, or other aggregate information at the beginning or end of each group.

Insert a page break before or after each group to start each data group on a new page.

Hide the details of each group to view a summary report.

In addition, Interactive Viewer performs the following actions when you group data:

Removes duplicate values for each group.

Sorts the values of each group. For example, a country group displays the countries in alphabetical order, as shown in Figure 5-9.

Generates a table of contents that displays the values of every group when you view the finished report in the viewers. The table of contents allows you to navigate to specific locations in the report. This feature is particularly useful when a report contains many pages.

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