Printing indertiminate number of photos

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill
  • Start date Start date
B

Bill

I have racked my brain over this one.

I have an Access 2002 application, that one of it many
functions is to print out order forms that contain proofs
of graduates who are photographed at their graduation.
These order forms are mailed to the graduate so that they
can place an order.

80%-85% of the time all graduates have the same number of
proofs, e.g. a photo of them getting their diploma and a
photo taken after they get off the stage in front of
flag. So they print from a form with two images boxes
designed in.

It is very easy to address this situation.

However, 10%-15% of the time the graduates may have a
different number of poses (most may have 2 but some may
have 3 or 4). The requirement is, using a form that
supports two images, have it add a second page and create
the right number of images boxes on it to handle the
overflow. Since they print 400 or so order forms at a
time, they do not want to print 360 forms with a 2nd
blank page, just to get the 40 that require a 2nd blank
page.

And yes we do print from a form not a report. It turns
out the performance on printing 300-500 reports was
terrible. Plus we did not have the design control we
wanted.

Any good ideas will be appreciated.

Bill
 
Hi Bill,

have you tried having the photos in a continuous subform
(may need to set to cannot add new records to avoid blank
record)?

Luck
Jonathan
 
Thank Jonathan,

A typical proof is 2.5" high x 2" wide.

The solution would work but the problem is you would have
one Image block per line which is 2.5 inches tall. So if
you had 12 images, you would be using up a lot of paper,
not to mention the design aspect would not be good.

We prefer to have image blocks go from left to right and
then vertical. So a blank 8.5 x 11 sheet should be able
to handle 4 image boxes wide and 4 images boxes tall.

Bill
 
So, why aren't you using a report ? -
Have you tried using Crystal Reports to print your forms?

The only other solution I can think of is this:
Create a scratch table -
TblPhototemp
StudentID, Photo1 Photo2, Photo3, Photo4.

set your sub-form's datasource to be this scratch table.

now in the Main form's current event,
write some code to loop through the table containing photos
and insert/update rows in your scratch table where studentID =
MainForm.StudentID

Finally, requery the subform.

I doubt performance will be that great, but I hope this helps.

HS
 
Bill,
Look into a crosstab query - with a trick or two, that may work.

What is the structure of the images table?

HS
 
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