Modify Avery 5160 Label

[racassel]

Better reports needed!

Hello, trying to modify or recreate Avery 5160 Label. The stock one includes the calculated field full_address, however this is not the "full address" It appears to contain:
Primary Contact First and Last
Company
Title
Address1
City, State Zip

If there is no title, it is supressed, which is great however if it has a Title ,
City,State and Zip is dropped from the label.

Having flamed this report writer in previous posts, I will leave <flame mode off>.
But will request again CommitCRM consider revisiting these disfunctional reports and provide a better product. I am abandoning hope again and exporting my list to Excel so I can have my way with my data and Word Merge.

[Support Team]

This report is actually being widely used and the summary field merges different "To:" like fields dynamically. Yet you can copy this report and customize it to include only the specific fields you want.
In addition you have full control over the address summary of each account, if you don't like it dynamic you can always set a specific address summary for each account and the system will use it. For this please click the envelope icon near the address fields and in the Window that opens select the Custom Design tab and also the Custom option at the bottom so the system will know that it should use the Custom Design.

[racassel]

So as I understand it, I have a mailing of 724 records. Roughly 1/2 to 3/4 of them have an entry in the Title: field. For example, "Owner". Pull a list of the records where the title is not blank, and edit each address to be custom. Hard enough, but you cannot highlight and copy the default address and paste it into the custom address, it has to be hand typed (V5.7). Unless I want the labels to look like this:

Acme Corp
Wilie Coyote
Administrator
123 Thattaway

Now Warner brothers might know what City, State and Zip Wilie lives in, but for everyone else, the post office will not deliver it.

Maybe I am missing something, but the current Avery 5160 label cannot be used or modified easily to accomodate records with an entry in the title field. Its design is broken.

"Yet you can copy this report and customize it to include only the specific fields you want."
There are no controls for the fields included in ADDRESS_SUMMARY_CALC and seemingly no controls to create a custom calculated field.

Fussing with recreating the Avery 5160 Label, in order to get it "just right" to include the correct fields Contact, Company, Address1, Address2, City, State, Zip, the "Show Data" button is broken, I click on it and it does nothing. The preview tab at the top displays a blank page no matter what report you are trying to design. One has to save the report, generate it, make note of an adjustment, close it, open it in the editor, make a change and repeat the process. Report design is nit-picking enough with the proper tools, add in these broken features the work becomes even more frustrating.

[Support Team]

There's a button named 'Initialize' under the 'Custom Design' tab of the address, click it to have the custom design initialize with the relevant data, then edit it to your needs. This button also exists in version 5.7.

If you need to customize the report copy it and customize - you can then either use the summary field (one) or break the layout into separated data fields 'address1', 'contact', etc.

[racassel]

As always CommitCRM look the other way regarding the inadequacies of the report writer. I can understand. I don't want to look at it either. It is frustrating trying to work with something that is so broken.
As I have been trying to point out, the summary field appears to be broken if an entry is in the title field for this label, and several other functional problems with this version of the report writer plugin. As I understand, a new version 14 of this plugin is available to developers with runtime module included for $695, and with a little work, the preview feature could be enabled. Final complaints with the current version report writer is that it will not expand full screen. I have a 23" monitor and when I select full screen in the design window, all it does is shift the image to the upper left hand corner. The ability to scale and design full screen would be helpful. Lastly, the report parameters have to be entered each time for custom reports. There should be an ability to save the selection criteria with the report instead of having to enter each and every time. I suppose I am spoiled by having used state of the art design tools like Crystal Reports and R&R Report Writer, and better report writer plug-ins like the one used in Goldmine CRM which includes Crystal runtime plugin. I guess all the other CommitCRM users are okay using such an outdated, rudimentary tool, or they have worked around it with ODBC so I will shut up about this.