Tips For Creating Professional Reports

This video covers the key techniques we recommend for achieving a polished feedback report. The tips below expand on these techniques and cover additional best practices for building a professional report.

1. Prepare Your Rating Text

Your rating text (the text you write in the assessment builder that merges into the report) should be free of inherited formatting. When you copy-paste text into the rating text editor, it can carry over font styles, sizes, and colors from the source. (see video above for visual instructions)

To clear inherited formatting:

1. Select the text in the rating text editor
2. Click the Eraser button (Clear Formatting) in the toolbar
3. This resets the font and size to "inherit" - meaning the text will adopt whatever style is applied in your Word template

2. Use Word Styles for Consistent Formatting

Word Styles are the foundation of a well-formatted report. The style applied to a merge string determines the formatting of the output. For example, if a merge string sits inside a paragraph styled as "Heading 2", the merged text will inherit Heading 2's font, size, color, and spacing.

Why this matters

• Styles ensure consistency across your entire report
• Changes to a style update every element using it - saving time
• Merged content (rating text, scores, names) adopts the style of the paragraph it sits in

Recommended styles to define

3. Choose the Right Fonts

Not all fonts render reliably across devices and in PDF generation. To avoid unexpected font substitutions in your generated reports, stick to websafe fonts or embed custom fonts.

Quick recommendations

• Safest choice: Arial (sans-serif)
• Other reliable options: Calibri, Segoe UI, Tahoma, Verdana, Open Sans, Times New Roman, Georgia

4. Show Hidden Characters in Word

One of the most useful tools for troubleshooting report formatting is Word's Show/Hide button (¶). This toggle reveals hidden characters like spaces, paragraph marks, tab marks, and section breaks.

To turn it on:

1. In the Home tab, click the ¶ (Show/Hide) button in the Paragraph group
2. Hidden characters will now appear throughout your document

What to look for

• Extra paragraph marks (¶) - these create unwanted blank space in your generated report
• Tab characters (→) - can cause unexpected indentation in merged content
• Section breaks - verify these are placed correctly if you're using different page orientations or margins
• Manual line breaks (↵) - may cause text to wrap unexpectedly

5. Use Page Breaks, Not Line Breaks

A very common issue in generated reports is unexpected blank space. This usually happens when you press Enter multiple times to push content onto a new page.

Why this causes problems

Your report template contains dynamic content - charts, rating text, and score values that change based on each respondent's results. The amount of space this content takes up varies from report to report. If you've used extra line breaks to position content, the final generated report will have gaps where the dynamic content is shorter than expected, or content may overflow onto the wrong page when it's longer.

The fix

To ensure a section always starts on a new page, use a Page Break instead of hitting Enter:

1. Place your cursor where you want the new page to begin
2. Press Ctrl+Enter (Windows) or Cmd+Enter (Mac)
3. Or go to Insert > Page Break

With Show/Hide turned on (see the section above), page breaks display as a dotted line with the label "Page Break" - making them easy to spot and manage.

6. Use Tables for Layout

When positioning content in your report - especially merge strings for charts, scores, and text - always use tables rather than text boxes.

Why tables work better

• Table cells expand vertically to fit dynamic content - text boxes don't
• Charts and images inserted by merge strings are inline content that respects document flow within tables
• Text boxes float above the document and can cause charts to clip, overlap, or disappear entirely

Table formatting tips

• If you're using a table purely for layout (not as a visible data table), you can remove the borders, so they don't appear in the generated report. To do this, select the table > Borders dropdown > No Borders. If you want visible borders as part of your design, you can keep them
• Set explicit column widths rather than relying on auto-fit
• Use cell vertical alignment (center) for cells containing charts
• Adjust cell margins (0.05"-0.1" padding) to fine-tune content positioning

7. Manage Images and Charts

Images

• Use PNG format for logos, icons, and decorative elements - it provides the crispest output
• Compress images before embedding to keep your template file size manageable
• Always set images to In Line with Text (right-click the image > Wrap Text > In Line with Text). Floating images can cause layout issues in generated reports.
• Place images inside table cells for reliable positioning

Chart sizing

Charts generated by merge strings are rendered as images at the pixel dimensions you specify. Use these guidelines to size your charts:

8. Pre-Upload Checklist

Before uploading your template to Brilliant Assessments, run through this checklist:

1. Delete all comments - comments can appear in the output
2. Check merge string syntax - ensure all merge strings use the correct format: {Type[Parameters]}
3. Verify charts are in table cells - not in text boxes or free-floating
4. Confirm images are "In Line with Text" - not floating or anchored
5. Set your default font - ensure it matches your Normal style
6. Remove extra line breaks - use Page Breaks instead (turn on Show/Hide to check)
7. Test with a response - generate a test report to verify everything renders as expected

FAQs & Troubleshooting

Use the questions below to troubleshoot common report design issues.