The first time you run Reporting4Act!, the Setup dialog prompts you for the location for reports and other data files. You can change this location in the Locations page of the Options dialog.

If you want Reporting4Act! to use a server database to store its data, including reports, rather than in files, see the Using a Server Database for Reporting4Act! Data help topic.

This location is stored in a settings file called Data.ini in the Data subdirectory of the program folder. (If you upgrade from an earlier version, this file may be in program folder instead.) This file can also optionally contain the location of the Reporting4Act! "system" files, such as the license file and users table.

This file has the following contents (note that there may be more settings than just these):

[Options]
CommonFiles=location of files

where location of files is the location of the reports files. If this location is the same as Data.ini, a "." is used as the location. This makes the location more portable; if the application and its data files are moved from one directory to another, there's no need to edit Data.ini in this case.

Using Data.ini has a couple of advantages over previous versions that stored this information in the Windows Registry. One is that it's easier to change the location of the reports files; you simply edit the location in Data.ini following the instructions below. Another is that workstation setups are easier. In previous versions, after installing Reporting4Act! on a server and specifying the location for the reports files, you then had to do workstation installs and specify the same location for the reports on each workstation. If you chose the wrong location on one particular machine, that user didn't have access to the reports. Now, after the first user runs Reporting4Act!, Data.ini contains the proper location, and each workstation automatically uses that location.

If you need to change this setting for some reason (for example, you selected the wrong location or want to move your reports to another folder), modify the location specified in this file. The easiest way to do that is the following:

• Run Reporting4Act!. From the Help menu, choose the About function.

• Click the "Reporting4Act! data folder" item in the list to bring up Windows Explorer for that folder.

• Double-click Data.ini (it may display as Data rather than Data.ini, depending on how you have Windows Explorer configured).

• Edit the location following "CommonFiles=" to the new location. Save the file.

Note that the new location will not take effect until you close Reporting4Act! and run it again.

Note that changing the location doesn't automatically move your existing reports to the new location. If you want the reports you created to be available, you must move the files in the old location to the new one. If the new location already has a copy of these files, don't move the old files to the new location or you'll overwrite the reports someone else created. Instead, change the location in Data.ini back to the old location, run Reporting4Act! and export any reports you wish to keep. Then change the location in Data.ini to the new location, run Reporting4Act!, and import the reports you exported.

One consequence of Data.ini in a server environment is that all users access the same reports location. If you want users to access different locations, add the following line to Data.ini:

UseRegistry=Yes

This tells Reporting4Act! to store the location of the reports files in the Windows Registry, which is what previous versions used to do. When each workstation runs Reporting4Act! for the first time, they'll be prompted for the location of their reports.