Access Cookbook

Avoid Unwanted Blank Rows on Mailing Labels

Problem

When you print mailing labels, especially when you use a small font size and place the address text boxes close together, you sometimes get unwanted blank rows in the addresses when the labels print. You also can’t seem to use lines or graphics on your labels without causing blank rows. How can you get your labels to print correctly—without blank rows—in these situations?

Solution

The CanGrow and CanShrink text box properties for reports allow text boxes to grow or shrink vertically as needed. These properties normally work well, but sometimes overlapping text boxes or graphics can interfere with text boxes’ ability to shrink or grow. This solution shows how you can avoid these problems by combining the output of several fields into a single expression and using that expression as the row source of a single text box.

Open the tblCompanyAddresses table from 03-08.MDB in datasheet view. You can see that this table contains typical address data, with three address fields (Address1, Address2, and PO Box). Some of the sample records have blanks in at least one of these address fields.

Close the table and open the rptLabels report in preview mode. This is a typical mailing-label report, as might have been produced by the Mailing Label Report Wizard. Notice that there are no blank rows in the addresses. Now open the rptLabelsWithImageBroken report in preview view (see Figure 3-16). We added to the left side of each label an Image ...