Advanced Report Studio

This topic discusses advanced use of Report Studio. For a basic introduction to Report Studio, see Using RMScript and Using Report Studio.

To format an HTML template file in Report Studio:

In Files, double-click the required html file.
The file opens in in Report Studio and in Rich Text Mode. This picture shows an example:
To see the html tags, change to Code Mode by clicking the Code button. For example:
To save as html and not rmscript, ensure you are back in Rich Text Mode and Save the html file.
Also, in Rich Text Mode, click Run to see the html output.

Report Studio's Code Mode is useful for identifying errors in your rmscripts. To debug an rmscript:

In Files, double-click an rmscript file to automatically open it in Report Studio and in Code Mode.
Macros are automatically colour coded and any added indentation is shown:
Click Run in Code mode to run the file and see a lower progress pane where you can click any macro icon to see its details. For example, this shows a ForEach macro shown in red indicating that it has failed:
The Macro Details Message on the right tells us Report Studio did not find an EndForEach.
If we correct the EndForEach macro and now add a parameter to a macro and run it again...
the macro icon is orange indicating a warning which we can see from the macro details means that the "error" parameter is unused / ignored.
Sometime a valid parameter will cause a warning message, for example, when adding mode=legacy or using Legacy Mode.

Check the mode you are in before saving your file. Saving in the wrong mode can add unwanted html around code ! Similarly, saving new html files accidentally in Code mode will not add the required doctype and header tags to the file.
Check the variable mode you are in before testing rmscripts

Pasting from chat systems like Teams or from Microsoft Word and Visual Studio Code will copy formatting which Rich Text mode will try to interpret into html tags.
Therefore when adding macros to html templates, type or copy them without colour or indentation by pasting via a simple editor like Notepad. This is because indentation in Rich Text mode can result in macro errors when there are none