Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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In the foregoing introduction to Access, we covered the basic components of the program with an eye toward using them in a business context – remember our example of Surrealty Corporation. Now that we know our data is stored in tables, we can populate our tables with forms, and then generate reports, let's put these components and a few others to use in a typical business scenario.

Continuing with our database, we have added some more records to our Listings table so that we are showing a total of nine properties for sale in various areas of Los Angeles.

We double-clicked the Listings Table to reveal the records, and we could easily click CTRL + A to select the entire table, right-click and Copy it to the Clipboard, and then paste it into a Word document – for example, a letter to a potential buyer listing the properties for sale.

But suppose the buyer had already told us that he wanted to spend no more than $1.5 million on a home? Sure, we could delete the inappropriate records from the table once it was pasted in Word. But we would still need to format it in Word, and this is a cumbersome process if you need to repeat it on a regular basis.

Let's use the components of Access to automate the process.

First, we'll create a Query to filter the information we want out of the database. If we double-click to create a new Query in Design view, we can simply choose the table that includes the data we want to extract or filter out – in this case, Listings.

From the Field list, double-click on the fields you want in the results – and simply avoid those you don't need, such as the Seller's name or the ID number – to add them to the Query in Design View.

Since our client told us that $1.5 million is the maximum he wants to pay, we enter the appropriate item under Criteria for the Price field:

When we click the "!" to run the query, the results reveal only the relevant properties.

Again, we could copy and paste these into Word, but instead we're going to create a custom Report.

We can close the Query results by shutting the window, and name the query in a way we'll remember. We can reopen the Query in design mode by simply clicking the Design button again.

Now we'll open the Reports panel, and double-click to create a new report from the Wizard. For the source, we select the query we just created.

Since the query already filtered out the fields we don't want, we can simply add all of the fields from query to the report.

In the wizard, I group by city, so the client can decide on location first:

Then I sort the results by Price - Ascending:

Finally, I complete the Wizard and select to Preview my Report. It's not bad. In fact, it's similar to the earlier report we did in the introduction to Access.

But now we know we can redesign the report the same way we did the query: by clicking on the Design button.

Be careful in examining this view. The areas will be filled in by the query information. But what we can do right away is to select the main heading in its placeholder.

Then we can delete it and replace it with our own information. We'll call this the "Surrealty Property Report".

We'll take it a step further, and copy our logo from the Office Clip Organizer.

And we'll paste it into the design view of the Property Report and drag the image away from where it covered the heading.

Now if we run or preview the revised report, we have a really nice customized document we can easily send to our clients.

If we return to the Reports panel, we can right-click this newly saved report, and select Save As, and notice our choices.

We can save a copy of the Report, which we can revise again in design view once we master the ins and outs of that toolset. (Or we can use the Report Wizard to create new reports from tables or queries, and copy and paste the design elements we want prior to saving the new reports.)

But lo and behold, we have another option here. We can save it as a Data Access Page. Let's do that...

Notice that the file type we're creating is HTM. This is a Web page from our report, based on the query!

The final version previews in Access the way it will look in a Web page. We just need to click the "+" signs next to the groupings to open them up to see the entries.

Double-click the saved file to open it in Internet Explorer. The same result will occur: a functional Web page of our data which we need to expand to reveal the results.

If you look at the folder where you saved the file, you will see it as a separate file, a named HTML Web page. You can post this file on a Web site, and send the link to your clients so view (and print) the report.

But you can also see the newly saved Web page in the Pages panel of Access.

Notice that now there is another wizard to create a data access page directly, and you can do this directly from the entire table.

If we once again choose only the fields we need, and go through the wizard, we won't group the records but instead just sort them ascending by price...

The past page of the wizard lets us put a title on our Web page.

When we click the Save button, we can name it, and once again notice it's a complete HTM page. Look at the component on the page; it resembles a Form.

If we look at the Web page in our folder, and double-click it, it is indeed a form in a Web page. The user can navigate, to go from one record to the next; each record shows a different home for sale with its various parameters.

TIP

The best way to add your logo or other design elements to these data pages is to open them in a Web editor, like FrontPage, and then save them to the same folder. If your Web site has FrontPage extensions loaded, you can publish it directly into your web.

For more information on how to work with FrontPage and Data Access Pages, check this article in Microsoft's Knowledge Base.

TIP

To ensure the functionality of the form, publish or upload the underlying database file (the MDB file) to the same folder on your Web site.

We could have done some of these things in Word, but each time the data changed, we would need to regenerate the Word document and cut and paste the table into it.

This solution is the essence of Access because it is dynamic. As our data changes in the table, the results of our query will change when it is run, and the report and data page we regenerate thereafter will automatically contain the very latest data. That makes it a cool business solution even for occasional Access users.

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