Pagination and formatting for reports

Legacy enterprise reporting often requires precise control over pagination. Page breaks and page controls ensure content is organized logically, headers and footers appear consistently, and reports retain their intended layout across print and export formats. Paginated reports are ideal for generating invoices, financial statements, operational reports, and other documents that require consistent formatting across pages and export formats.

Use pagination to divide large reports into smaller pages for analysis and navigation. Control how report content is displayed by configuring the number of rows per page or enabling a single scrollable page. Choose the layout that best fits the report for navigation and presentation.

The following sections describe how to use pagination options, such as defining the number of rows per page and customizing the header and footer in your reports.

Prerequisites #

Create an intelligence sheet and select the Matrix visual. Assign dimensions and measures.
Add a Super Filter visual from the Visualizations pane. Assign the dimensions to use for filtering, such as Region, Year, and Business Unit, to the Category data well.

Define the rows shown on each page

Reports are paginated by default and split across multiple pages depending on the total number of rows. You can go to the next page or the previous page, skip to the first or last page, or enter the page number to open a specific page in your report. Pagination controls are located in the bottom-right corner of the report in the status bar. Select the Settings icon to customize pagination.

Set a fixed number of rows to show per page or dynamically add page breaks based on a dimension category.

To show a fixed number of rows on each page, select the Settings icon and then specify the number of rows to show per page.

To show the entire report on a single scrollable page, select All.

Use row breaks to combine rows from a specific level of the row hierarchy, such as region or product, on a dedicated page. This option groups related records together on a single page, making paginated reports easier to read. In the Format ribbon, select the Page Break icon, and then select the dimension to use for row breaks.

When page breaks are defined based on row or column dimensions, the Rows per Page setting is unavailable because page boundaries are determined by the selected dimension values.

Insert break rows to create custom page breaks at specific locations in the report. Use this option to separate key sections or logical groups, regardless of the underlying hierarchy or dimension structure.

To insert a row break at a specific location in the report:
1. Select the row gripper for the row where you want to insert a new page.
2. Select Insert > Add Break Row.

3. In the Format ribbon, select the Page Break icon, and then select Break rows.

In this example, break rows are inserted to place APAC and EMEA on separate pages, while North America and Latin America are grouped on a single page. The following animation shows the resulting report structure after the page breaks are applied

Add a report header and footer

Headers and footers are particularly valuable in paginated reports, where content spans multiple pages, and reports are frequently printed or exported to formats such as PDF, Word, or Excel. They ensure that important information is repeated consistently on every page, even when pages are viewed independently.

1. Hover over the header section and select Edit from the More options (...) menu. Alternatively, double-click the header to edit.

Create a custom header or apply a built-in preset to quickly add a report header. In the Header & Footer ribbon, select Presets > Header and select the header template. Header elements such as company logos, titles, and summaries are pre-formatted and positioned.
Select the container with the Your Logo placeholder and select the Replace Image icon. Upload your organization's logo. Hover over a container and use the drag handles to resize it.

Select the container that holds the title text. Delete the default title to insert custom text. Select the Insert element icon and select Slicer to display the slicer selections in the header.

The header captures the slicer selections:

Select Close Editor after you finish your changes.
To insert a footer, select Header & Footer in the Format ribbon to enable the Header & Footer ribbon.
Select Presets > Footer and select the preset.

To display a timestamp in the footer, select the Insert element icon, select Date, and then choose the required format.

Additionally, apply custom colors to the column and measure headers. Choose Select Header from the column gripper. Change the font and background color and apply customizations from the Format ribbon.

Add notes and annotations #

Adding notes to reports provides valuable context that helps readers understand the data beyond the numbers. Notes can explain significant changes, highlight key insights, document assumptions, and communicate important business context without modifying the underlying data.

In financial and operational reporting, notes are particularly useful for documenting budget variances, explaining forecast adjustments, justifying writebacks, recording approvals, and providing commentary on significant business events.

Select a row category, column header, or cell. In the Intelligence ribbon, select Notes > Add New Note. Use the rich text editor to enter and format notes. Select Save.

Enable Footnotes to view all cell, row, and column-level notes entered in the report.

Export reports to Excel and PDF#

Select the Export icon in the Matrix ribbon to create fully formatted Excel and PDF exports for distribution. In PDF format, you can export all columns in the matrix or limit the export to selected columns. Excel exports preserve hierarchical data and allow you to export with expand/collapse buttons, fully expanded, or the current report state.