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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics GP (Archived) / What is a # symbol in ...
Microsoft Dynamics GP (Archived)

What is a # symbol in Report Writer?

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Posted on by Dale Coulthard 3,055

We are on GP 2010 SP1. I am working on creating our forms via the Word templates. For the packing slip, we use the short form and have it highly modified. Since the Word template uses the blank form, I need to first create the modified form of the blank report to have the same new fields/tables as the short form.

One of the calculated fields on the short form is a string which relates to our company's city, state, zip and country.  The calculated string is

City # "," # State # " # Zip Code # " # Company Country

What does the # symbol do in Report Writer? Is it simply a string that I need to insert? Do I need a space before and after the #? I attempted to create the field without the # symbol and I receive an error when trying to print the report. The error message is simply Error in equation.... and it states the name of the new field.

Thank you.

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  • Heather Roggeveen Profile Picture
    Heather Roggeveen 9,142 on at
    Re: What is a # symbol in Report Writer?

    Sandip - you are most welcome.  It is nice to have the feedback, thanks.

  • sandipdjadhav Profile Picture
    sandipdjadhav 18,265 on at
    Re: What is a # symbol in Report Writer?

    Heather,

    You rock!!! You have saved my days!!!

    Thanks so much for posting solution.

    Appreciate.

    Thanks

    Sandip

  • Heather Roggeveen Profile Picture
    Heather Roggeveen 9,142 on at
    Re: What is a # symbol in Report Writer?

    This is a really simple little trick that we use all the time to reduce report writing time.  If you have a format that you like and need it in another format, you can use Customisation Packages to do most of the work.  Then you make any tweaks:

    1. Export the package for the report you like (Short Form in your case)

    2. Click modifiy on the new report so it gets added to the list in Customisation Maintenance (Blank in your case)

    3. Export the Blank package

    4. Open both packages in Notepad

    5. Copy the report name from the Blank package and paste over the top of the name in the Short package.  This is on the first two lines.

    6. Hit save and close

    7. Go to Customisation Maintenance and import the Short form.  This will ask you if you want to overwrite the Blank layout (this is because you put the Blank name over the top of the Short name in the Short package).

    8. Click yes

    9. Give access to the new report and you now have a mirror image of the one you had before

    The same thing can be achieved to copy the Open SOP layouts to the Hist SOP layouts.  You do exactly the same thing with the additional steps of doing a find and replace.  Find any reference to SOP_HDR_WORK and replace with SOP_HDR_HIST, and the same for  SOP_LNE_WORK with SOP_LNE_HIST.

    The same thing can also be done from Invoice Layout to Return layout.

    It is a great way of reducing the amount of time you need to spend in the annoying Report Writer window doing the same thing over and over.

    Hope this helps.

  • Suggested answer
    Dale Coulthard Profile Picture
    Dale Coulthard 3,055 on at
    Re: What is a # symbol in Report Writer?

    Heather,

    Thank you for your question.  No, I am not starting from scratch.  I was modifying the blank packing slip to mirror image the short form (for some reason, years ago, the short form was the one modified to be used in our organization).  Since the blank form is the one Microsoft used for the Word Template, I am mirror imaging the blank form to look like short form.

    I am the first to admit that I am not a guru in Report Writer (obviously that is the case based on my original question).  So, if I could have exported the short form as a package (yes, I do know how to do that), and could have simply marked the blank as a modified form, then in the customization maintenance, I could have highlighted the blank form and imported the short package to override the modified blank form and GP would have allowed me to utilize it as part of my Word Template design for the blank packing slip, then please let me know the steps I just described would be correct so at least I know for future reference this is acceptable for GP.  

  • Heather Roggeveen Profile Picture
    Heather Roggeveen 9,142 on at
    Re: What is a # symbol in Report Writer?

    Question - are you completely recreating the report in the blank form.  Do you know that you can export the package file, change the heading and reimport it as the new report?

    If you don't know how, I can provide you with more details.

  • Suggested answer
    Dale Coulthard Profile Picture
    Dale Coulthard 3,055 on at
    Re: What is a # symbol in Report Writer?

    Thanks Francisco.  Someone explained to me that I just needed to hit the CAT button to get the concatenate function into my calculation.

    Best regards,

    Dale

  • Verified answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member Microsoft Employee on at
    Re: What is a # symbol in Report Writer?

    Its the concatenate function, just like you add the + sign to add, the - sign to substract, the # concatenates strings in excel you use =Concatenate("Francisco"," ","Hillyer") the result is "Francisco Hillyer", in Report Writer if I have Francisco # Hillyer it will give me "FranciscoHillyer" on your sample it will place the City Name, State, Zip, Company Country giving you an address line like this "San Diego, CA, 92123, US"

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