3. Working with the user interface

This section highlights some common operations performed while developing a template:

Creating, deleting, importing and exporting

In the File menu you can find all the operations to be performed on projects, these are:


  1. Create a new project. Use the „New..“ item.  Select new FO Report Project and follow the steps in the wizard.



    Enter a project name and press finish



  2. Deleting a project: press DEL on the project folder, make sure you select the „Delete project contents on disk“ checkbox


  3. Importing a report. Use this to import single report files. A new project will be created using the file name.


  4. Import a legacy report. These are .xrp files used in FO Designer 1.*. Same as above but using legacy files instead.
  5. Save reports to the file system
  6. Export and import complete projects (including XML and schema files).

    Select export and File system. If you select „Archive File“ the project will be exported to a zip file.



    Last, select the objects to be exported and press finish:





Selecting objects

Objects in the areas can be selected in 3 ways:

The selected object can then be resized or moved all together using the mouse.

Operations on files

You may use the context menu to delete, copy or rename files or whole projects however make sure that:


Operations on objects

There are other operations you can perform on the selected object by using the context menu (mouse‘s right click)

The operations are not explained here in detail since they are self-explanatory and quite standard in many windows programs. Additionally to the operations listed the following operations can be performed by using the keyboard:

Operations on areas

The areas item in the main menu allows the following operations:

Both operations work using the Outline view.

The preferences dialog

In the windows menu there are 3 items (4 if you install the SVN plugin):


The settings are:

The local history

The designer will keep a copy of the previous report each time your click on the save button. The settings in the preferences dialog will determine how many and how long the copies will be kept.

In order to recover a previous version of the report, first close the report then select the „Show local history“ in the context menu.



The local history window will open. You can use the context menu „Get Contentsto recover a previous version (make it the current version) and replace the current one.

After getting a previous version you can open the report as usual, you will be now working with a copy of a past version.



The report assistant

The report assistant is a report creation wizard that will take you through the steps of creating the skeleton of the report. By skeleton we mean:


What you need to do after the skeleton has been created include (but not only) items as below:

Look at the 2 videos below for a quick introduction