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A thing one commonly sees in reports of species seen on a trip is an indication that the species was a "lifer". On the Trip Report tab in Reporting, lifer status is not one of the options for "Report Columns," so that would be a good addition if indeed straightforward
By the way, other things often in these lists include summary/compendium of the locations where the species was seen, as an alternative to multiple rows for all the locations. I don't expect the software to do that, so will do some manual work after it's exported, along with some other modifications, probably either in Word or Excel. The RTF export option puts everything into text boxes, which seems to be unusable, so I'll try exporting it to a PDF and converting that to a DOC. Am I missing some easier methods?
A thing one commonly sees in reports of species seen on a trip is an indication that the species was a "lifer". On the Trip Report tab in Reporting, lifer status is not one of the options for "Report Columns," so that would be a good addition if indeed straightforward
You are probably aware that the Sightings Report does highlight lifers when that option is selected.
The Trip report options are rather limited compared to the Sightings report and only serves to list each species sighted only Once. Since it is potentially combining several sightings of the same species into one, it then becomes problematic to specify a species as a lifer, when only one of the combined sightings was actually THE Lifer.
Perhaps I can help you get what you want out of the Sightings report. Let me know why you are choosing the Trip report instead of the Sightings report. Please give an complete example of one of your Trip reports.
By the way, other things often in these lists include summary/compendium of the locations where the species was seen, as an alternative to multiple rows for all the locations. I don't expect the software to do that, so will do some manual work after it's exported, along with some other modifications, probably either in Word or Excel. The RTF export option puts everything into text boxes, which seems to be unusable, so I'll try exporting it to a PDF and converting that to a DOC. Am I missing some easier methods?
If I understand what you are after here (summary list of locations for which all sightings in the report occurred in), this means that you are generating a report that spanned multiple locations and perhaps dates. In this case, I would typically include the Location name in the report field and then Group By Location, such that all sightings are listed by location. The Sightings report will tell you how many unique species you saw and how many were lifers.
In the first example above, you can Group By Common Name to only show each species once using the Sightings Report! This does essentially what the Trip report does.
Here's the Column setup
And then the final report, combining several locations for December, 2020.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Jeff
Oh, I chose "Trip Report" because that was my goal, to produce a list for the trip, it hadn't even occurred to me to look elsewhere! Now I'll go look into a Sightings Report, thanks.
By the way, though it's not important, you write "the Trip report... only serves to list each species sighted only Once," but when I had Location and Date as among the columns, the Trip Report did include multiple rows for many species, one for each location. (I tried to attach the PDF of the report but it says "filetype not allowed", so here's a screenshot, hope you can enlarge it.)
Hi Stephen,
Yes, depending on how you setup your Trip report, each name will be unique (show only once) per location and date.
Nice bird list, and trip!
Play around with the Sightings report. Note: if you do group-by Common Name then the Lifer Highlighting will not occur, as it can't pick the individual sightings that was your lifer.
For big trips like this, I like to create a report that either groups by Date and then Location or the reverse order; whichever you want to see it in. Then I don't group by common name, so that Lifer Highlighting will occur.
I now see that I need to add Date-Only field to a possible Sightings Report column so that you can Group-by Date-Only. As all of my sightings now have Date-and-Time, so grouping by that field produces a new group for every possible combination. Coming soon.
Jeff
p.s. marking as solved now. But let me know if you have any more questions.
Hi Stephen, et al,
This thread got me to thinking about the need for a Date-Only field to display or Group-By for reporting purposes.
I have added this to a new release, today or tomorrow, v5.2 Build 54.
Here's the report I think you want and should be able to get out of BD.
Grouped By DAY (Sighting Date-Only [no time]), and then by Location.
Notice how Lifers are highlighted and the sightings are separated by Day and then by Location in the report.
Here is the report Column setup for Build 54.
Check for program updates sometime tomorrow.
fyi,
And thanks for the idea.
Jeff
