Simple Formatting Question

[Guest]

I have been through numerous Help topics, two Access books, and the Knowledge
Base, but can't find the answer to waht should be a straightforward question.

I have a database of ~500 upcoming DVD release records in 13 fields. I
simply want to output a sorted report without any tabs, columns or
justification, and with the records running consecutively (not 1 record per
page) . For example:

General format:
[Release Date]
[Director]: [Film Title] ([Year]) [[Distributor], [Country]]

Sample output:
01-Jan-2006
John Black: A Story of Love (1942) [Paramount, USA]
Karen White: A Dog Story (1971) [Warner, UK]
Karen White: A Cat Story (1972) [Fox, Poland]

08-Jan-2006
Fred Gray: Bang You're Dead (1998) [Columbia, Kenya]
Laura Fish: Scary Coffee (1919) [Criterion, Ulan Bator]

------

Secondly, I would like to add some simple BBCode (modified HTML) formatting
to the output for posting to an Internet discussion group. For example:

08-Jan-2006
Fred Gray: Bang You're Dead (1998) [Columbia, Kenya]
Review

-----

It seems like this sort of report would be very easy to structure and output
in a powerful db program like Access, but I'm stumped and frustrated.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Brian
Seattle

 

[Marshall Barton]

I have been through numerous Help topics, two Access books, and the Knowledge
Base, but can't find the answer to waht should be a straightforward question.

I have a database of ~500 upcoming DVD release records in 13 fields. I
simply want to output a sorted report without any tabs, columns or
justification, and with the records running consecutively (not 1 record per
page) . For example:

General format:
[Release Date]
[Director]: [Film Title] ([Year]) [[Distributor], [Country]]

Sample output:
01-Jan-2006
John Black: A Story of Love (1942) [Paramount, USA]
Karen White: A Dog Story (1971) [Warner, UK]
Karen White: A Cat Story (1972) [Fox, Poland]

08-Jan-2006
Fred Gray: Bang You're Dead (1998) [Columbia, Kenya]
Laura Fish: Scary Coffee (1919) [Criterion, Ulan Bator]

------

Secondly, I would like to add some simple BBCode (modified HTML) formatting
to the output for posting to an Internet discussion group. For example:

08-Jan-2006
Fred Gray: Bang You're Dead (1998) [Columbia, Kenya]
Review

Create a new report (without using a wizard) and select your
table. Use the View menu to display the Properties window.

Then use the View menu to open the Sorting and Grouping
window. In the top part of the window select the date field
and in the bottom part set the Group Header property to Yes.

Now use the View menu again to dispay the Field List. Then
drag the date field to the group header section. Click on
the new date text box and enter a custom format in the text
box's Foramt property:
dd-mmm-yyyy

Now create a text box in the detail section. (Click on the
text box tool in the Toolbox Toolbar, and then click in the
detail section.) If a label was created along with the text
box, click on the label and hit the delete key. Now click
twice on the text box and enter an expression like:
=Director & ":" & [Film Title] & " (" & [Year] & ") [" &
Distributor & ", " & Country & "]"

Make sure the text box is wide enough to display all the
data. Also Drag the bottom of the detail section up to the
bottom of the text box.

Try to preview the report, it should present the data the
way you want.

I have no idea how to get the report to a web page, but you
may want to check Help for OutputTo method.