Access™ 2007 Bible

Chapter 20. Advanced Access Report Techniques

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Learning techniques to add to your Access reports

• Adding alphabetically and numerically sorted lists to reports

• Using report events and VBA code to enhance reports

• Hiding headers and other report sections at runtime

• Adding extra white space between detail sections

• Applying special formatting to even and odd pages

Back in the bad old days, most computer-generated reports were printed on pulpy, greenbar paper in strict row-and-column (called tabular) format. The user was expected to further process the data to suit his particular needs — often, a time-consuming process that involved manually summarizing or graphing the data.

Things have changed. Visually oriented business people want useful, informative reports produced directly from their databases. No one wants to spend time graphing data printed in simple tabular format nowadays. Users want the software to do much of the work for them. This means that reporting tools such as Microsoft Access must be able to produce the high-quality, highly readable reports users demand.

Because Access is a Windows application, you have all the super-duper Windows facilities at your disposal: TrueType fonts, graphics, and a graphical interface for report design and preview. In addition, Access reports feature properties and an event model (although with fewer events than you saw on forms) for customizing report behavior. You use the Visual Basic language to add refinement and automation to the ...