Preventing Widowed Records with the Group Keep Together Property

Access includes a property for groups, Keep Together, which prevents widowed records from appearing at the bottom of the page. Depending on your report section depths, you might find that only a few records of the next group (called widowed records) appear at the bottom of the page. The report designs shown in Figures 16.26 and 16.28 have six and nine widowed records at the bottom of the first report page.

You can force a page break when an entire group doesn't fit on a page by following these steps:

1. With the report in Design view, click the Sorting and Grouping button to open the Sorting and Grouping dialog.

2. Select the field with the group symbol in the selection button that corresponds to the group that you want to keep together. In this example, select CategoryID.

3. Open the Keep Together drop-down list and select Whole Group, as shown in Figure 16.30.

   Figure 16.30. Select the group to keep together (CategoryID), and select Whole Group.

   

4. Close the Sorting and Grouping dialog and click Print Preview to see the result of applying the group Keep Together property.

Tip

If you want to delete or add a Group Header or Footer singly (rather than in pairs), select Yes or No in the appropriate property field of the Sorting and Grouping dialog.

The Report Wizard makes the other entries in the Sorting and Grouping dialog for you. The next chapter describes how to use the Sorting and Grouping dialog to design reports without the aid of the Wizard.