Chapter 7 - Using Reports to Print Data

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After entering data into tables, using forms to make the data entry easier, you’ll probably want to print out the data in an organized fashion. Forms are great for reviewing data online, but they are designed primarily for entering and editing data; to print data in an attractive and easy-to-understand fashion, you need to create reports.

Since version 1.0, Microsoft Access has featured a powerful report component capable of producing grouped reports to summarize data—a task that previously required purchasing a third-party reporting tool such as R&R Report Writer or Crystal Reports, which were used to produce reports based on dBASE data. Access reports are optimized for printing data stored in tables, with a number of special features designed to work with multiple records of data.

Access 2002 (unlike Access 1.0) includes several other tools you can use to summarize data—data access pages, PivotTables, and PivotCharts—but reports remain the best all-purpose tool for printing data.

tip


If your users will need to work with summarized data in a dynamic manner, you can create a grouped data access page, PivotTable, or PivotChart instead of a report. PivotTables and PivotCharts in particular allow users to rearrange rows and columns of data to get the desired view of the data. See Chapter 18, "Working with Data Access Pages," and Chapter 12, "Using PivotTables and PivotCharts to Analyze Data," for more information on these alternative methods of displaying summarized data.

Reports can display data record by record, as in a name and address or mailing label report, or reports can be grouped by fields significant to users. A grouped report (sometimes known as a banded report) divides the data into one or more groups, arranged hierarchically, usually suppressing any data that’s repeated in the report. For example, a grouped Customers report might group data first by country, then by state/province, and finally by salesperson, to compare sales in different countries and regions. Another grouped report based on the same data could group by salesperson, then by country, and then by state/province, to compare how different salespeople are doing in various countries and regions. Grouped reports are helpful for presenting an overview of data from a specific perspective.

Another common report type is the summary report. A summary report, as the name suggests, summarizes data, using a grouping function such as Sum or Count. Summary reports omit the details and give you just the totals (or counts) of the relevant data, such as total sales by region. Summary reports are often based on crosstab queries, which you can use to manipulate data from different angles to get the results you’re interested in.

Because forms and reports have different purposes—forms are designed to display and modify data, whereas reports are designed to print data—you should design reports from the ground up rather than print a form or save a form as a report. Designing a report from scratch lets you optimize the report design for printing and avoid useless or confusing design elements that might be carried over from a form, such as record selector combo boxes or command buttons, which are very useful features on forms, but utterly useless on reports.

To design a report to display data in the most efficient way, you need to be familiar with the controls that work best on reports and with the special report features that let you group, sort, and summarize data in reports. See the "Sorting and Grouping" section later in this chapter for detailed information about grouping, sorting, and summarizing data in reports.

For more details on working with controls, see Chapter 6, "Working with Form Controls." Most of the information in this chapter applies equally to controls on forms and controls on reports.

A well-designed report uses only a few control types and makes only light use of design elements such as color, lines, and rectangles. It might also use special report features such as grouping and summarizing of data or running sums. Interactive controls (such as command buttons and combo boxes) aren’t useful on reports and should be omitted.



Microsoft Access Version 2002 Inside Out
Microsoft Access Version 2002 Inside Out (Inside Out (Microsoft))
ISBN: 0735612838
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 172
Authors: Helen Feddema

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