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A few practical tips from experienced practitioners: run and install Report Designer as Administrator, since permission issues can otherwise cause obscure problems. Save frequently, using Save As before nearly every change, since Undo is unreliable and the whole report design can crash unexpectedly. For basic report work, open a report's exported schema and layout files separately, using File > Open on the layout file first, then the schema file, and use the built-in local Preview option (under File) to render a test PDF locally, using an XML data file pulled from IFS's Report Archive via its RMB 'Get XML data from Report Archive' option, rather than needing to deploy and reprint from inside IFS for every test iteration. When you need to move a text box within a row of an existing layout, splitting a column and re-merging it is often the only reliable way to reposition it without breaking the layout entirely, especially on complex multi-layer reports; adding new columns/rows to an existing layout commonly breaks it instead. Before nudging box positions with arrow keys, reduce the View > Grid Options snap-grid increment, for example to 0.1 or smaller, for much finer positioning control.