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Exploring the Designer Reporting Environment

This topic introduces the layout of the Designer reporting environment, and the functions of each part of Designer. For simple operations, it only provides a brief how-to introduction. You can get more information about the features in the linked topics.

The Designer development environment consists of the following parts:

• Start Page
• Ribbons
• Catalog Manager
• Data Panel
• Components Panel
• Inspector Panel
• Design/View Area

You can dock the Data, Components, and Inspector panels into Designer or display them as floating windows. To display a panel as a floating window, move the pointer to the panel bar till it becomes a four-way arrow, then drag it out of the docking area. This is especially useful when you have multiple monitors available. To return a panel to it's docked position, drag the bar containing the tip "Drag here to dock." of the panel to the left or right side of Designer and when you see a box attached to your mouse pointer, release the mouse button and Designer docks the panel there.

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