Section 8.4. Filtering and Sorting a Report

8.4. Filtering and Sorting a Report

Reports offer much the same filtering and sorting features that you learned to use with the datasheet in Chapter 3.

8.4.1. Filtering a Report

The ProductCatalog report presents all the records from the Products table. However, reports often need to filter out just an important subset of information. For example, you may want to analyze the sales of products in a specific category or the orders made by customers in a specific city. In the case of the ProductCatalog, it's logical to leave out discontinued items. After all, there's no reason for Boutique Fudge to advertise items it no longer sells.

You can pare down the results that are included in a report in two ways. You've already learned about one option: creating a query that extracts the results you want, and then using that query to build your report. This option is a good choice if you already have a query that fits the bill or you plan to use this subset of data for several purposes (reports, editing, other queries, and so on).

Another choice is to apply the filtering through report settings . The advantage of this technique is that you can change the filter settings quickly and repeatedly. If you plan to use the same report to print several different subsets of data, this approach is best. For example, you could filter out the products in one category, print them, and then adjust the filtering to select products in a different category, which you could also print.

Report filtering works the same way datasheet filtering does (discussed in detail in Section 3.2.2). You have two options:

• If you want to quickly build a filter condition based on an existing value, right-click that value, as shown in Figure 8-18. For example, in the CategoryName field, you can right-click the value "Beverages." The menu that pops up includes several filtering options based on the current value. Depending on the option you choose, you can include records in the Beverages category, records in different categories, records that have a category name that includes Beverages (like "Alcoholic Beverages"), and so on.

• If you need more flexibility to create the filter expression you want, right-click any value in a column, and then look for the filtering submenu. The exact name of the menu depends on the data type. For example, if you right-click the CategoryName field, you see a submenu named Text Filters. If you right-click the Price field, you see a submenu named Number Filters. These submenus include a range of filtering options that let you set specific ranges. For all the exquisite details and help creating a variety of filter expressions, refer to the instructions in Section 3.2.2.

Figure 8-18. The quick filtering options you see vary based on the data type. Here, the filtering options let you set a variety of filters based on the term "Beverage."

You can apply filters to multiple columns at once. To remove a filter, right-click the column, and then choose Clear Filter.

8.4.2. Sorting a Report

Ordinarily, a report has the same order as the underlying data source. If you've built your report on a query, the order is determined by the sort order you used in the query. If you've built your report on a table, the records have no particular order at all, although they'll typically appear in the order you added them.

Either way, you can apply formatting directly in your report, in much the same way that you can with the datasheet (Section 3.2.1). Simply right-click the appropriate column header, and then look for the sorting options. The sort commands depend on the data typefor example, you can order text fields alphabetically , dates chronologically, and numeric fields in ascending or descending order.

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Note: You can sort using only one field at a time. If you want to apply a more complex sort that uses more than one column (for example, a sort that separates products into alphabetical categories and then orders each category by price), you need to build a query for your report.

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