Access or Excel Reports

[Richard]

I have designed an Access 2000 database that is multi user.

Currently I am using Excel 2000 for reporting as this was the format that
was used previously when there was no database and the spreadsheets/reports
have quite a lot of formatting eg borders and shaded cells (different
colours). And there are multiple tabs in the spreadsheets/reports.

I have set up a macro in the spreadsheets/reports that runs a query file
..dqy which queries the Access database and populates the relevant
spreadsheet/report.

My question is should I be using Access Reports instead of Excel and can I
replicate the look/format of an Excel spreadsheet in an Access Report?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

There are things that you can do in Access reports that are difficult to do
in Excel, and things in Excel that are difficult in Access. Access reporting
is very easy to do, so I'd suggest trying any new reports in Access first.
It doesn't make much sense to change the Excel reports that are working well
for you to Access.

 

[Richard]

Thanks Arvin,

The database holds incidents/accidents. Each record has department, date of
incident, location, incident type, kind of incident, HSE reportable etc.

The report needs to give totals of how many incidents there have been for
each type of incident (there are about 16 types) in each month, quarter, and
year for several departments in a Word like table. The report needs to split
the data down to departments. The reports also need to state whether there
was 'Lost Time' or not, this is a drop down box in the database.

Would this be achievable in an Access Report?

Thanks again...!!

 

[aaron.kempf]

I disagree.

There are things that may _SEEM_ hard in Access reports.

But just because your infected with that spreadsheet _CRAP_ that
doesn't mean that you need to talk about it in our holy land.

Oh, but it's '_HARDER_'.

Do you know what happens if you don't learn reports?
Then someone in india will- cheaper, better, faster- and you'll be out
of a job.

I don't think that Excel should be installed on any machine in any
company.
It's a cute little toy and nothing else.

Arent' you tired of copy and paste?

-Aaron

 

[Dale Fye]

Absolutely. The key is writing your query so that you can then use some of
the Grouping properties of Access's reports. They are very easy to use. The
challenge will be that if people are used to seeing their reports in Excel,
there may be some pushback when you go to an Access report. Personally, I
export my reports in the Access snapshot format, or print them to a PDF
format. If you need more help with the report, post back with more details
about your table structure, and what you want the output to look like.

Don't worry about Aaron's rant about Excel. He is usually trashing anything
to do with Access and extolling the virtues of SQL Server Reporting Services.

HTH
Dale
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[a a r o n . k e m p f]

Access MDB / ACCDB and SharePoint and Excel aren't suited for business
needs.

Sorry--- but having 10,000 different versions of the truth-- doesn't
constitute 'meeting the needs of businesses'.

-Aaron

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

With ease. Depending upon how you designed your tables, you'd group on
either the DepartmentID or the DepartmentName. There are 10 levels of
grouping available in an Access report. From your description, it looks like
you need only 3 of them.

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

Thanks Arvin,

The database holds incidents/accidents. Each record has department, date
of
incident, location, incident type, kind of incident, HSE reportable etc.

The report needs to give totals of how many incidents there have been for
each type of incident (there are about 16 types) in each month, quarter,
and
year for several departments in a Word like table. The report needs to
split
the data down to departments. The reports also need to state whether there
was 'Lost Time' or not, this is a drop down box in the database.

Would this be achievable in an Access Report?

Sure. There's even a Report Wizard to aid you. What you need to look for is
group levels on departments. You can also write a query, using a crosstab
and the Partition() function to divide everything into Quarters, then use
Group levels in your report to separate the departments.