• Install Report Designer Office Edition
• Create a Data Connection
• Create a Report Template
• Add Tags to a Report Template
• Generate Your Report

First, get the Designer installer:

• Go to https://www.windwardstudios.com/trial/download
• Complete the form
• Click on "Start Your Free 14-Day Trial"
• Click on "Download Windward Studios"

Then, run the installer WindwardWebInstall.exe. It will connect to the Internet and download the applicable Designer for your operating system and Office version.

• Accept the EULA
• Enter your Designer license key when prompted.

• Start Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

• Verify the Designer tabs are available by opening Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and look at the ribbon. If the tabs are not visible, reboot your machine.

• Learn more about the Designer interface here.

1. From Word, Excel or PowerPoint, select the AutoTag Manager tab.
2. Click on the upper half of the Data Sources button. This will open the data source Connection Editor.  (Note that if you click on the bottom half, you will get a drop-down menu which lists data sources that are already defined; this list may be blank.)

3.  In the Connection Editor window, click on the "New" tab.
4. Click on SqlServer Database under SQL data sources. The Details pane will change to prompt you for your data source details.
5. Enter a nickname for your data source connection. It is a best practice to always assign a nickname to your data source in the Name field. This will be helpful later when working with templates.
6. Enter the Server and Database names. The Database field will auto-populate from the server once the Server field is set. In most cases you will need to set your database Username and Password for the Database field to auto-populate. You can type in the database name or select from the list. To use Windward Studios' sample SQL Server database, use mssql.windward.net.

7. To login to the database, use Windows authentication with "Use Windows Identity", or select the push-button "User Username/Password" for SQL Server authentication. To connect to Windward Studios' sample database, use username "demo" and  password "demo".
8. In the Display Tables section, the User and User Owned selections have the same effect for SQL Server. The User selection will pull the metadata only of the user-created tables in the database. The System selection will pull the metadata for both the user-created and system tables in the database.
9. Click on "Test" to test that the connection information is correct. If all parameters and credentials are correct and a connection is made, you will receive a successful notification. 
10. Click on "Add".
11. Finally, click on "Close" to save your information.

See our Data Sources Reference for instructions to connect to every Windward-supported data source.

A report template is simply an Office document created by Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and to which Tags will be added. This single document can be used over and over to create reports whose Tags have been replaced by data.

To begin, open Word, Excel, or PowerPoint and create a document which looks the way you would like your final report to look, leaving blank areas for Tags, which will populate the area with the data you want to appear once you run your report. You can create the template to display almost anything you'd like, including headers, footers, borders, bullet points, numbered outlines, page breaks, images, backgrounds colors, multiple fonts and more.

Here's an example of a report template in Word. Note the blank areas that have been created where you would like the report data to appear:

Now that you've connected to a data source from which you can retrieve the data for your report (Create a Data Connection), and designed a report template (Create a Report Template), you're ready to link the two. This is known as tagging - adding data placeholders, or Tags, to a report template.

There are numerous ways to add Tags (drag and drop, Wizards, and more), and we won't walk through those here. For step-by-step tutorials on adding Tags, head over to the [Windward Tutor].  

After adding Tags, our report template now looks like this:

Once you have a tagged report template, you can generate a report with up-to-the-second data. Simply choose the desired Output with a button click from the AutoTag menu:

Here's the PDF report from our report template:

For more information about the Designer, we offer Tutorials, Videos, and Help Articles.

• You can watch an Introduction to Report Designer video, which will walk you through the basic Designer functionality.
• There are quick-start resources at our company website.
• We also have convenient, downloadable Report Designer Office Edition Training Guides.