# Report Designer XML Copy Out works, Paste back?

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/report-designer-xml-copy-out-works-paste-back/20973>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [November 20, 2018, 2:57pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/report-designer-xml-copy-out-works-paste-back/20973 "2018-11-20T14:57:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dano38291](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dano38291](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/dano38291)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 2:57pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/report-designer-xml-copy-out-works-paste-back/20973/1 "2018-11-20T14:57:49Z")

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Hello,  
I use the Report Designer a lot. Its tedious to click through the GUI to align the Various Column Widths to be the same between a Header/ Details row or across align Column widths across Peer Tables.

So I got a tip from Ignition Support that you can copy out a Table/ Table Group to Notepad. Just curious if anyone figured out how to get the XML back into to Report Designer? **At least the XML copy out allows me to see all the Columns Widths I need to clean up to be the same.**  
[TableGroup Copy Out from Report Designer.txt](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/6/608d6aded53f0bfa7693ee17e7c79c335ee08585.txt) (2.4 KB)

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**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 3:49pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/report-designer-xml-copy-out-works-paste-back/20973/2 "2018-11-20T15:49:42Z")

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You could probably adjust the code I posted in previously to support 'pasting' in a table - the reason you can't copy the table out, edit it, and then copy it back in is that it doesn't show up in the system clipboard as the right "type" of data to Java - that's what the MockReportMillClipboard is doing in that example:

> [@PDF report linking](http://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/pdf-report-linking/18860/2):
>
> You completely nerd-sniped me with this topic - I definitely shouldn’t have spent as much time on this as I did. But, this is actually possible with the existing reporting module. We’ll definitely have to see about adding this capability in a better way. Basically, the workaround I came up with relies on the fact that objects in reporting can be copied to the clipboard and show up as XML representations of the underlying Java object. So, to use this (extremely janky) workaround: 0. Paste the s…

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**Author:** ![Aaron\_Shivne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@Aaron\_Shivne](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Aaron_Shivne)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2022, 12:33pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/report-designer-xml-copy-out-works-paste-back/20973/3 "2022-05-02T12:33:55Z")

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I am looking for the same functionality. In the report designer copy out to XML and paste back into the designer.

What data type is needed to adjust the code you provided to make this function work?

Thank you,