Truncation of data when publishing Report Preview with Word

[Jeffrey Ross]

I'm using MS Access 2002 and Word 2002.
I generate an Access report which displays fine in the Report Preview window
but presents two types of truncation when exported as a RTF document into
Word:
1. Some field labels, eg "Change Summary:" are truncated by a word (ie to
"Change"), and
2. Some fields (with "Can grow" set) are truncated by one or more words in
an apparently haphazard but repeatable manner. This varies from one record
to the next, ie a field may not be truncated in one record, but may be
truncated on the next. For one record the truncation will occur on line 4,
while on others it may print 6 lines with no truncation for the same field.

The first problem can be resolved by extending the size of the container for
the field label. The second problem can be improved by resizing the field,
but I've been unable to resolve some truncations. If I change the data in
the field the truncation may disappear, but that's no good.

Resultant problems:
1. I can't tell if a field has been truncated or not (apart from reading
each field and guessing if there should be extra words, or comparing the
content of my tables with the report output, neither of which are
acceptable).
2. Even if I know that a field has been truncated it is not easy to cut and
paste the missing text. Report preview doesn't allow text selection, so I
have to go to the table containing the actual data.

Searching the MS site shows a similar problem and a rather pathetic
workaround which doesn't solve my problem. Searching the Web produced a hit
with the same problem in Access 97, but no solution.

Any useful advice out there for this very frustrating non-WYSIWYG fault?

Thanks,
Jeffrey.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;288877

http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/archives/9909/techwhirl-9909-00426.html

 

[Rick Brandt]

I'm using MS Access 2002 and Word 2002.
I generate an Access report which displays fine in the Report Preview
window but presents two types of truncation when exported as a RTF
document into Word:
1. Some field labels, eg "Change Summary:" are truncated by a word
(ie to "Change"), and
2. Some fields (with "Can grow" set) are truncated by one or more
words in an apparently haphazard but repeatable manner. [snip]

Searching the MS site shows a similar problem and a rather pathetic
workaround which doesn't solve my problem. Searching the Web
produced a hit with the same problem in Access 97, but no solution.

Any useful advice out there for this very frustrating non-WYSIWYG
fault?

If you did a search you probably saw a post or two from me. The solution is to
NOT use the RTF export option. It is flawed and has always been flawed for all
but the simplest of tabular output.

 

[Jeffrey Ross]

I'm using MS Access 2002 and Word 2002.
I generate an Access report which displays fine in the Report Preview
window but presents two types of truncation when exported as a RTF
document into Word:
1. Some field labels, eg "Change Summary:" are truncated by a word
(ie to "Change"), and
2. Some fields (with "Can grow" set) are truncated by one or more
words in an apparently haphazard but repeatable manner. [snip]

Searching the MS site shows a similar problem and a rather pathetic
workaround which doesn't solve my problem. Searching the Web
produced a hit with the same problem in Access 97, but no solution.

Any useful advice out there for this very frustrating non-WYSIWYG
fault?

If you did a search you probably saw a post or two from me. The solution is to
NOT use the RTF export option. It is flawed and has always been flawed for all
but the simplest of tabular output.

Thanks Rick.

I'm not familiar with any other method of getting the report format into a
Word document.

If I export as HTML I end up with dozens of files and the same truncation
occurs there.

If I export as TXT the truncation appears to have been resolved but the
format is next to useless of course.

Is there any way of preserving the report format while keeping the data?

Regards,

Jeffrey.

 

[Rick Brandt]

Thanks Rick.

I'm not familiar with any other method of getting the report format
into a Word document.

If I export as HTML I end up with dozens of files and the same
truncation occurs there.

If I export as TXT the truncation appears to have been resolved but
the format is next to useless of course.

Is there any way of preserving the report format while keeping the
data?

Does it need to be editable? Have you investigated using a PDF creator?

What I have done on a few occassions is use file i/o features in Access to write
RTF directly to a file. This cannot be done generically and it's not a trivial
task, but you can build a routine to do this for specific reports. The results
are nice though because you get a very compact RTF file (much smaller than a
standard Word doc), you can embed fonts, graphics, etc., and you have complete
control.

The biggest hurdle is learning how to use the RTF tags. While similar to HTML
it is a lot more complicated. What is helpful is obtaining an RTF editor
program that is very frugal with its tag generation. In the same way that MS
products that spit out HTML tend to produce very verbose HTML, their products
that produce RTF files are also way more verbose than necessary. WordPad is not
too bad, but there are probably better programs available. Then you can create
a sample report that looks like what you want as your final result and use
NotePad to examine the RTF required to achieve that.

The only other alternative that comes to mind is to use automation of Word
starting with a template file of some sort. I cannot comment on the
complexities of that as I have never attmepted it. In some case mail-merge can
be a godd alternative as well, but I have not seen good examples of how to do
tabular stuff with that.

 

[Jeffrey Ross]

Does it need to be editable? Have you investigated using a PDF creator?

What I have done on a few occassions is use file i/o features in Access to write
RTF directly to a file. This cannot be done generically and it's not a trivial
task, but you can build a routine to do this for specific reports. The

results
<snip>

Thanks, Rick.
Unfortunately they may need to be edited so I haven't gone down the PDF
path.
The manual creation of RTF tags sounds feasible but the cost would outweigh
the advantage. It's hard to believe that MS Access reports can't be
converted to Word documents reliably. For the present we will either type
in the missing words or export as TXT and cut & paste.
Appreciate all your helpful ideas. Pity that we're basically having to do a
lot of work to work around a significant product deficiency.
Jeffrey.