Spreadsheet-syle report in Access

[Guest]

Hello All,

I was asked to create an Access application to manage project data for the
company I work for. Several of the reports generated from the application
were originally created in Excel, and it was requested that I build the
Access reports to look as similar as possible including the sections with
outlined borders. I was able to pull it off by drawing the horizontal and
vertical lines around fields in the detail section so that they create a
spreadsheet appearance, however, the process was painfully slow and tedious.

Is there an easier way to create this grid effect in Access or by outputting
to another Office application?

 

[Guest]

You could set the border style and color for your report fields by selecting
multiple fields and setting those properties only once instead of drawing
individual lines,

 

[Guest]

Thanks so much for the advice. I guess it comes down to the lesser to two
evils.

It should be simple... I have a single row of 7 fields lined up
horizontally in the detail section of my report. The first field on the left
is a text field and all the rest are currency. All have the same font/font
style/font size.

I've tried selecting all the fields, setting a common height and then
setting a common border style (as per your recommendation). After switching
over to print preview, however, all of the currency fields were aligned
correctly but the text field had vertical gaps. Access 2000 seems to have a
problem setting the height of the text field exactly equal to the height of
the currency fields. When I select them all at once and enter a height of
0.17", for instance, Access will round the text field height to 0.1667" and
the currency fields to 0.1701". I can't understand why this happens,
especially since their original height values were all less than 0.16". So
long as I don't use a border style other than hairline I can tweak the text
field enough to align pretty closely, but never exact.

During my initial attempt, I gave up on trying to use the field borders to
create the grid effect and decided it would be easier to just draw the lines
myself. Getting all of the short vertical lines drawn and aligned correctly
was no picnic but this approach worked okay at first. When I tried to add a
column later on, however, Access starting giving me fits. I made the mistake
of attempting to select and move all the vertical lines at once and
accidentally slanted them a little to the right. Going to the line
properties, I thought I might be able to find a way to set them back to
vertical but the only options available were to slant them left or right.
Access seems to prefer them slanted too, because I ended up having to adjust
each line separately, making several attempts each to get them all back to
vertical.

If anyone happens to know of a third approach, I'd love to know what it is.

Regards,

 

[Chuck]

On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 11:08:28 -0800, Dewey <[email protected]>
wrote:

Is your report based on a Query? If so, how about exporting the query directly
to an Excel file?

Just a Wizard Prodder
Chuck

 

[Guest]

Yeah, just design your report so that it works well in an Excel format.

Jaybird