writing a letter with a report

[Guest]

What I am trying to do is take data from different tables and
write a letter. For example, I have teh clients name, age, and address in
Table A. Table B has information on there previous orders. Table C has
information regarding orders from the sales department. Table D has
information about orders from teh service department, and so on. I have
several tables all related in this way. Obviously, not all clients will have
records in each table.

I want to be able to write a letter to the client using a report that
summarizes our services. It can be a form letter. But some of the reports
will need to have additonal sections, ie another paragraph if the client had
previous orders. The report also has to be like a Word document in that it
will look like a normal letter, be gramatically correct, etc.

Is this possible to do using a report. I have had trouble using Word for
this becasue of the several different combonatins that are possible.

 

[Fons Ponsioen]

Access is an excellent media for this purpose,You can omit
or add paragraphs based on the data in the underlying
query.
The query structure will be most important so as to
include forinstance all clients and only those related
records from related tables. By doing so you can create a
formletter and for instance by using
="your comments" + [yourdata]
you would automatically omit this paragraph if [yourdata]
is null for a client where [yourdata] is null, and where
there is an entry in [yourdata] the corresponding
paragraph would print.
Hope this helps.
Fons

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your response. Now that I know this is possible, how do I go
about constructing this report? Do I have to make queries first? Every time
I try to make a report it ends up looking like an Excell table, how do I make
it look like a word document? furthermore, how do I tell it to leave
paragraphs out? I guess I dont understand the commands or scripts or macros
that I need to accomplish this? thank you
russ

Access is an excellent media for this purpose,You can omit
or add paragraphs based on the data in the underlying
query.
The query structure will be most important so as to
include forinstance all clients and only those related
records from related tables. By doing so you can create a
formletter and for instance by using
="your comments" + [yourdata]
you would automatically omit this paragraph if [yourdata]
is null for a client where [yourdata] is null, and where
there is an entry in [yourdata] the corresponding
paragraph would print.
Hope this helps.
Fons

 

[Fons Ponsioen]

Wether you need a query or not is dependent on your data
structure, If your report is based on just one table and
you do not wish to filter the data for this report you may
not need a query.
Just for conversation; I assume you have 2 tables with 3
fields each,
Table1: text1, text2 and text3.
Table2: memo1, memo2 and memo3.
Table1 text fields contain the data on which you want to
determine if the paragraphs are to be printed, with other
words, if these text fields do not contain data you do not
want to print the correponding paragraphs from Table2.
Table2 memo fields contain the paragraphs you wish to
print depending on the Table1 data fields.
Now open a new report in design view, from the view menu
open the properties window. Click the build button to the
right of the records source field, and select the two
tables (Table1 and Table2). Select all fields from both
tables. Do not link these two tables.
now return to the report design view window, insert three
unbound textboxes, as the source of each of these
textboxes type repsectively
=[text1]+" " +[Memo1]
=[text2]+" " +[Memo2]
=[text3]+" " +[Memo3]
The reason you use "+" instead of "&" is that using + if
either is null the result will be null, so if text1 is
null, Memo1 will not print. Setting the can grow and can
shrink properties of these textboxes to yes will remove
any blank spaces. If the text dat needs to be printed in
the middle of a paragraph you would break the paragraph
into two memos like memo1a and memo1b and than in the
textbox you would type
=[memo1a]+" " +[text1]+" " +[Memo1b]
etc.
Hope this helps. If needed you may email me at fonsponsio
and at the sbcglobal.net provider.
Fons

-----Original Message-----
Thank you for your response. Now that I know this is possible, how do I go
about constructing this report? Do I have to make queries first? Every time
I try to make a report it ends up looking like an Excell table, how do I make
it look like a word document? furthermore, how do I tell it to leave
paragraphs out? I guess I dont understand the commands or scripts or macros
that I need to accomplish this? thank you
russ

Access is an excellent media for this purpose,You can omit
or add paragraphs based on the data in the underlying
query.
The query structure will be most important so as to
include forinstance all clients and only those related
records from related tables. By doing so you can create a
formletter and for instance by using
="your comments" + [yourdata]
you would automatically omit this paragraph if [yourdata]
is null for a client where [yourdata] is null, and where
there is an entry in [yourdata] the corresponding
paragraph would print.
Hope this helps.
Fons

-----Original Message-----
What I am trying to do is take data from different

tables
and

write a letter. For example, I have teh clients name, age, and address in
Table A. Table B has information on there previous orders. Table C has
information regarding orders from the sales

department.
Table D has

information about orders from teh service department,

and
so on. I have

several tables all related in this way. Obviously,

not
all clients will have

records in each table.

I want to be able to write a letter to the client

using a
report that

summarizes our services. It can be a form letter.

But
some of the reports

will need to have additonal sections, ie another paragraph if the client had
previous orders. The report also has to be like a

Word
document in that it

will look like a normal letter, be gramatically

correct,
etc.

Is this possible to do using a report. I have had trouble using Word for
this becasue of the several different combonatins that are possible.

.