Converting FoxPro 2 reports

The Report Designers are very similar in all versions of FoxPro:

The only obvious differences are that the Visual FoxPro Report Designer has a floating toolbar and has a grid in centimetres rather than in inches. Both Report Designers are based on Page Header, Detail and Page Footer bands and both have the same set of controls which can be dropped onto the report.

When you come to run the report you can use the same syntax as in earlier FoxPro for DOS and Windows:

This command in Visual FoxPro can accept additional parameters but the basic FoxPro 2 commands will run unchanged.

Both Report Designers store the description of the report in a pair of dbf-format files with .frx and .frt extensions. Despite this similarity, the two are not compatible. If you open an earlier report file in Visual FoxPro then a dialog will appear asking whether you want to convert the report file.

When you do run the conversion, VFP will make backup copies of the original files and will store them with .f2t and .f2x extensions. Despite this safety factor, it would still be a very wise precaution to make your own backup of the files before starting.

Version 9 of Visual FoxPro introduced the Report Listener class which can intercept and control the production of reports but can still run older reports unchanged.

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