Value of a single row running across Pages in rtf

[varma1987]

I had to concatenate all the Concomitant medications of  a subject into one row and it resulted in a column with nearly 100 CM's fitted into one row of max length of $1400. when I have to present this information in a listing which has 12 columns and the max width I can assign for each column is not more than 1 Inch, as a result this specific CM column is running across multiple pages disrupting the footnotes and not making any sense on few pages. What can I do to make it look meaningful and not effect the footnote on each page?

[ballardw]

First thing I might consider without knowing anything about your process or requirements is to see if any of the values in that "100 of CM's" are duplicates and see if removing duplicates helps.

Then you have to decide which is critical, column width or having 10 pounds of text crammed into a 1 ounce package.

If you do not have many of these cases you might 1) remove the offending elements from the main table and 2) present them as an addendum table that allows wider columns as "outliers" or some such label.

Another option might be to replace the entire string of CM's  with a text that says "too many to fit in allowed space".

I strongly suggest contacting the users of this output to see if they have a preference among these options. There may be others as well.

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi:

  Depending on how your data are structured, you may want to restructure it so that all the medicines are in one big character string, as shown below:

I did fiddle with the number of medicines for each person so the screen shot would fit on one page, but you see that all the medicines do stay in one cell and the cell just gets longer based on how big the string LONGMED is.

  This may or may not work with your data, but you didn't provide any data or code that you'd tried, so this is just my visualization of what you might be describing or needing.

Cynthia

[varma1987]

I wrapped the data into one row, but the challenge is, I have 12 different columns in the same page and as you can see in the highlighted part and CM data is going over the footnote across rtf page. 

[varma1987]

Thank you for your suggestion, Even after presenting duplicates, the list is huge. 

[Cynthia_sas]

Hi: I think that you might have some better luck trying orientation=landscape, but I think your best resource for this issue is to open a track with Tech Support.

Cynthia

[Jianmin]

Hi @varma1987, @Cynthia_sas  and @ballardw, 

I really appreciate your question and the effort to solve the problem.  The solution requires a different implementation of Microsoft Word/RTF in PROC REPORT and the issue is related with the concept of 'breaking a cell across pages'.  The latest PROC REPORT document mentioned an option of this idea, and the Tech Support might have a solution for it. 

Here is an example how Microsoft Word/RTF solves this problem:  

I opened a Word document, insert a 3X3 table; I made the first row as Header row and allowed cell break in the second row (all in table option), nothing on the third row; and save it as an RTF file. 

I made 3 headers (A, B and C) in the first row; copied the text of your question, and pasted it in the cell of second row and column B 3 times.  Now this cell grows big and across 2 pages.  See the attached for yourselves. 

Also note Microsoft Word/RTF handles pagination very nicely, and you don't have to worry about where to break a page.  You can try your data in that cell and see how it is handled.  

Many Thanks, 

Jianmin Long