Report Formatting

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Smith
  • Start date Start date
J

John Smith

I print a schedule of the classes I teach. At the top is a grid showing 8
lesson times down the left side (y axis) and about 20 dates across the top
(x axis). Each cell in the grid contains a group number. Below this grid is
a listing of the students in each group - first a Group Number heading, then
followed below by the name of each student member. Since it is a relatively
narrow list (one name wide - max 35 characters), I flow it over to a second
or sometimes (if needed) 3 columns to keep it all on a page.

My Access 2000 student database contains, among other things, fields for
first and last names and the student's group number.

I have building the schedule in Word 2000, cutting and pasting the student
information into it from a straight report containing the Group Numbers and
student names that I generate in Access 2000 and export to RTF. It is not
hard but it's tedious and it needs to be manually updated from time to time.
I'd like to create the schedule as a report directly in Access but have run
into two formatting problems:

The grid seems hard to build in Access. I've tried to put one in the Report
Header section, but find creating the grid lines difficult.

The list, which I can create easily enough in the detail section as a
straight-down list, needs to print in flowed columns. Is there a way to do
that in the Access report generator?

Alternatively, is there a way to create the format (including the complete
grid) in Word and link the student list to my Access fields so that it
always will contain up-to-date data without having to do all the manual
cutting, pasting and reformatting?

Thanks in advance.
 
You should be able to do it in Access without too much difficulty. Simply
show the borders on the textboxes and but them up against one another.

If you want more formatting, you can always export a query to Excel and
print the grid easily from there. That way you can alter individual elements
of the grid.
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
Microsoft Access
Free Access downloads:
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.mvps.org/access
 
Are you talking about the grid? Yes, I guess that's a way to do it, although
we're talking about 120 little text boxes I need to butt up against each
other. But once that's done (up in the page header area), it's done and it
doesn't change much.

But the more difficult part (for me) has been trying to get the class lists
underneath (in the detail section) to format into flowed (continuing)
columns. That's where the dynamic data are shown, and that's the part I have
to import with cut-and-paste and reformat each time I need to make an
updated schedule. Any idea about placing column breaks in the data?
 
Sorry it took so long to get back here, I missed it the first time I looked.

The 120 boxes are simple:
1. Create 3 and put them together in a single line.
2. Select them Edit ... Duplicate and add the group to the line (6 of them
now)
3. Select them Edit ... Duplicate and add the group to the line (12 of them
now)
4. Select them Edit ... Duplicate butt the next row underneath. (24)
5. ad nauseum

For columns in a single large text box or list box you can use the Space()
function like:

Space(40 - Len([FieldName])

which will line up everything 40 spaces to the right.
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
Microsoft Access
Free Access downloads:
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.mvps.org/access
 
Hi,

You might want to consider XpertDoc as an alternative solution.

XpertDoc will read your Access data and produce an RTF file directly.
No need to have a seperate export step.

Because XpertDoc reports are designed from within MS-Word itself, it
is very easy to achieve exactly whatever result you are looking for,
from multi-column layout to tables to footnotes.

You can check it out at www.xpertdoc.com

Regards,
 
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