Why Active XL Report?

Active XL Report is an ActiveX component designed for report generation in Microsoft Excel using Automation (formerly known as OLE Automation). Although Automation can be a slow process, Active XL Report overcomes this problem by using highly optimized algorithms so that it is now easy to transfer large volumes of data to Excel workbooks.

With Active XL Report, Microsoft Excel can be an integral part of your application. As a report building and data analysis tool, Excel is an excellent alternative to common report generators, and using Excel's built-in features can make your reports much more responsive.

Use Active XL Report as a tool for data transfer to Excel. Then use Excel visual instruments: formatting (including conditional formatting), AutoFilter, Pivot tables, charts, VBA, ActiveX controls, Web-publishing tools (Excel 2000 only) to construct a versatile data analysis system. With Active XL Report, you can move a lot of report programming and tuning into Excel. Active XL Report templates are simple and our algorithms are fast - we carefully count every millisecond - so you waste less time on routine report programming and get surprisingly fast results. If you want to master such a versatile tool as Excel - Active XL Report is an excellent choice.

Furthermore, Active XL Report does not operate with the usual concepts of band-oriented report tools: Footer, Header, and Detail. So you get a much greater degree of freedom in report construction and design, and the easiest possible integration of your application with Microsoft Excel.

Demo projects

To aid you in learning how to use Active XL Report, several examples are included in the document. They are collected in two demo projects: xlrDemo4VB and xlrDemo4Access that can be found at http://www.afalinasoft/downloads.html. The first one demonstrates the use of Active XL Report in Microsoft Visual Basic (SP3) and utilizes ADO, while the second one works in Microsoft Access 97 (Access 2000 and Access 2002) and uses DAO. You will find some additional information regarding these projects at http://www.afalinasoft.com/active-xl-report/.

Every project includes forms corresponding to chapters of the Developer's Guide. Each form is well documented, including form details, form name, and filename of the template workbook used. All the template workbooks are supplied with any of xlrDemo projects. All of the templates were created in Microsoft Excel 2000 but you can use Excel 97 also if MS Office Service Release 2 is installed. If you use Excel 2002 we recommend you to check the Trust access to Visual Basic Project checkbox in Tools|Macro|Secutity|Trusted Sources. Some examples contain macros written in VBA. It is beyond the scope of this manual to give a full VBA tutorial. However, you can use the Excel Help files and MSDN (see also http://www.afalinasoft.com/links.html) to gain a fuller understanding of the VBA code you will see in the Active XL Report examples.

There was no intention to make a finished application with a logical database structure. The xlrDemo project series was intended just to show you Active XL Report capabilities.

Finally, the current version of Active XL Report works with DAO, ADO, RDO, and unbound data.

Active XL Report and Microsoft Excel

Active XL Report builds reports in MS Excel. Experienced Excel users will find the methods and procedures of Active XL Report very familiar. Active XL Report works with MS Excel 97 SR2, MS Excel 2000, and MS Excel 2002. All features of Active XL Report have been tested on each version.

Note
Before using XL Report the first time In Excel 97, Excel 2000, and Excel 2002, you should open an empty workbook and clear the "Notify before state loss" flag in Tools|Options|General in VB Editor.

To work with Excel 2002 you should also check the "Trust access to Visual Basic Project" checkbox in Tools|Macro|Secutity|Trusted Sources.

Active XL Report Setup

The Active XL Report Setup procedure description can be found in readme.txt in the Active XL Report installation folder.

Support

Please email any questions or comments to Support@XL-Report.com. But first, always check http://www.afalinasoft.com/support/ where you will find the latest news, FAQ, and tips and tricks sections. To get our latest news by email, click here or subscribe directly at http://www.afalinasoft.com/. You can find the most current version of the software as well as documentation at http://www.afalinasoft.com/downloads.html.

How to redistribute Active XL Report

When you buy Active XL Report we send you a registration letter, containing your personal key that activates the component. You should never give away your key or pass it to your users under any circumstances. Moreover, you should keep your key in a safe location in order to prevent its corruption and/or unauthorized copying. The key itself is shipped in a .REG (.KEY) file attached to the registration email. You can view this file in Notepad, for instance. What follows below is an example of such a key file.

The Key parameter contains your name, address, email and company name in a ciphered string. In absence of the personal key you cannot use Active XL Report in design-time mode in Access and VB. In order to use all the features of Active XL Report you should transfer the key to the system registry. This can be done easily - save the attached file at location of your choice, then locate the file in Windows Explorer and double-click it. To distribute your application you should include AXLR.OCX in the installation package. You should register AXLR.OCX during installation either through the installer's features or using the REGSVR32.EXE utility (there is no need in this step if you use VB6 Package and Deployment Wizard). You can distribute unlimited copies of the OCX (minus the key file) with your products royalty-free. Active XL Report doesn't depend on any other files.

If you have any question on redistribution of Active XL Report contact us at Support@XL-Report.com.