Overview
This is a simple tip but worth bearing in mind as it can save you some time and effort. It is a good habit to get into in any case.
Creating a new Interactive Report
When you use the Create Page button in the Application Express App Builder, select Interactive Report and then follow the prompts through to the creation of the new page, what do you do next?
The page has been built in the designer, so do you now run it to see what it looks like?
Column sequence
Easy there tiger.
If you run the page straight away, the Interactive Report will appear and the column sequence that was defined in the builder will be the sequence that
is shown on the report. That's fine though, right?
It's absolutely fine if that is the sequence in which you want your columns to appear across the page. If it's not then you'll have to re-order them. The only issue now though is that you can't do that through the App Builder any more. The Interactive Report has been run, and now the only way that you can re-order the columns is through the Actions button when you are running the report itself. You then need to save the report.
OK, so it's not a huge deal, but it would have been easier if you had ordered your columns first.
Order before running
Once you complete the Interactive Report wizard, instead of running the new report immediately, drag and drop the columns into the correct order in the App Builder, as you would like them to appear on the report page. Save your changes.
When you then run the report for the first time, the columns will be sequenced correctly across the page.