Combine several reports into 1 print job

[Peter Carter]

Hi,
as I stated in the subject, I would like to combine several reports
into 1 report.
I did a google groups search, however, but I couldn't find any good
solution.

The most popular was the subreport, but I can't do this, since the
print order is extremely complicated and chaotic. Each page would
require a subreport... and there's about 100 pages.

Then many people recommended to convert the reports into a single PDF
document. It's a good idea, but we can't have Acrobat installed on our
computers. I'm in a big company, so having the permission to get
anything installed on a single computer takes months... and since my
application will be distributed around in the company, well it will
take months for it to work on my coworker's computer.

And finally, there is this solution from Mr. Lebans... convert the
reports into a Word or WordPad document. It's a good idea, but the
exportation to Word does not work at all. The WordPad exportation
works, but the report is out of the page bound, for some reason.
Another problem is that I dont think Word supports both Landscape and
Portrait orientations in 1 document (some of my reports are in
landscape, while some others are in Portrait...) however Acrobat PDF
does support that.

Any better idea? like using GDI to create my own print job?

Thanks.

 

[SA]

Peter:

Well, you've touched on all the reasonably easy possible options and
indicated why each won't work. There is no way to output your report via
GDI calls and append documents. BTW, Word will support pages with
different orientations in one document. Since that appears to be part of
your requirement, then realistically only a PDF document or a Word style
document would support your needs. If you can't get the client (i.e. your
company) to support the requirements for the solutions available, then
you've got to look for a different solution or adjust the client's
specifications and expectations.

Of couse you can use many different types of PDF drivers on machines other
than buying Adobe's full package. A driver like Win2PDF can be automated
(with as an example our PDF and Mail Library, Pro or Pro Plus edition) to
append Access documents one after another into a single document with
different orientations. Its a simple printer driver and works quite well.