Outputting a report to Word

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mik
  • Start date Start date
M

Mik

I’ve been trying to output a report to word but the formatting in the
new rtf document is all over the place in two respects:
1) The report, the main field of which is a memo field, appears to
have default carriage returns at end of its lines and when the report
is output to Word these carriage returns don’t correspond with the
Word page. Lines overrun and the carriage return appears midway on the
next line. Is this something to do with some form of Word wrap in the
report?
2) Page breaks occur in the Word/rtf document haphazardly e.g. a
couple of lines down the second page.

I wonder, does this memo field come with built-in formatting on the
report and is there some way of removing it so the rtf. report runs
continuously?

As you’ve probably guessed I’m new to this and any help would be
greatly appreciated.

Many thanks
 
It has often seemed that the phrase "life is full of little surprises" was
intended to apply to outputting Access Reports into RTF form. I'm sure
there are many reasons for this, but the fact is that you are likely to be
close to the same output only with especially simple reports. Just from
observing the kind of strange output in earlier versions, I would guess that
they start from the formatted Report output and try to convert, for what
that might be worth (not much, I suspect).

For other more complex reports, you will just have to experiment and "tweak"
until you get something near what you desire.

You can use a Word template and mail merge as one alternative... create the
mail-merge file from Access. This, to me, seems the simplest and most
straightforward approach if you feel compelled to use Word.

You can use COM automation to control Word and build your Word pages, to get
closer to the format you want, but it isn't a trivial task. If you are
skilled enough with Word (I am not), you can likely get exactly what you
want with enough work.

I just avoid having to deal with that... find some other way to serve the
business purpose.

Why, specifically, do you want to put your Reports into RTF (or Word)
format? With that knowledge, perhaps someone can make a useful suggestion.
Oh, and, yes, it would be helpful for the rest of us to know what versions
of Access and Word you are using.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP







I’ve been trying to output a report to word but the formatting in the
new rtf document is all over the place in two respects:
1) The report, the main field of which is a memo field, appears to
have default carriage returns at end of its lines and when the report
is output to Word these carriage returns don’t correspond with the
Word page. Lines overrun and the carriage return appears midway on the
next line. Is this something to do with some form of Word wrap in the
report?
2) Page breaks occur in the Word/rtf document haphazardly e.g. a
couple of lines down the second page.

I wonder, does this memo field come with built-in formatting on the
report and is there some way of removing it so the rtf. report runs
continuously?

As you’ve probably guessed I’m new to this and any help would be
greatly appreciated.

Many thanks
 
It has often seemed that the phrase "life is full of little surprises" was
intended to apply to outputting Access Reports into RTF form.  I'm sure
there are many reasons for this, but the fact is that you are likely to be
close to the same output only with especially simple reports. Just from
observing the kind of strange output in earlier versions, I would guess that
they start from the formatted Report output and try to convert, for what
that might be worth (not much, I suspect).

For other more complex reports, you will just have to experiment and "tweak"
until you get something near what you desire.

You can use a Word template and mail merge as one alternative... create the
mail-merge file from Access.  This, to me, seems the simplest and most
straightforward approach if you feel compelled to use Word.

You can use COM automation to control Word and build your Word pages, to get
closer to the format you want, but it isn't a trivial task. If you are
skilled enough with Word (I am not), you can likely get exactly what you
want with enough work.

I just avoid having to deal with that... find some other way to serve the
business purpose.

Why, specifically, do you want to put your Reports into RTF (or Word)
format?  With that knowledge, perhaps someone can make a useful suggestion.
Oh, and, yes, it would be helpful for the rest of us to know what versions
of Access and Word you are using.

  Larry Linson
  Microsoft Office Access MVP


I’ve been trying to output a report to word but the formatting in the
new rtf document is all over the place in two respects:
1) The report, the main field of which is a memo field, appears to
have default carriage returns at end of its lines and when the report
is output to Word these carriage returns don’t correspond with the
Word page. Lines overrun and the carriage return appears midway on the
next line.  Is this something to do with some form of Word wrap in the
report?
2) Page breaks occur in the Word/rtf document haphazardly e.g. a
couple of lines down the second page.

I wonder, does this memo field come with built-in formatting on the
report and is there some way of removing it so the rtf. report runs
continuously?

As you’ve probably guessed I’m new to this and any help would be
greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

Thanks Larry for your help. I'm using Word and Access 2002. The report
I'm exporting is made up of memo fields of various sizes which I'm
hoping to export into Word as a continuous document i.e. no random
page breaks or carriage returns. If there is no default formatting in
the Access Report which I can 'switch off' so it doesn't transfer to
the Word document, I think I'll have to manually edit it. It's not too
badly scrambled.

Thanks again.
 
Back
Top