␡
- Learning How to Create Reports
- The Asia Database
- Begin the Report by Creating a Query
- Beginning a Report in Design View
- Detail Section
- Page Header and Footer
- Using Concatenation
- Report Header and Footer
- Creating a Report Using the Report Wizard
- Comparing the From-Scratch and From-Wizard Reports
- Conclusion
- Case Example
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Comparing the From-Scratch and From-Wizard Reports
Let's compare the report you created from scratch (refer to Figure 10.16) with the report you made with the wizard (refer to Figure 10.18). If you view the two reports in Print Preview, you'll see that the data presented is the same. But there are obvious differences in the design.
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It's a good idea to open both reports and tile them, as well as switch freely between Design view and Print Preview in each to see how the controls determine the display. Both reports are in your solution database AsiaChap10End.mdb.
This similarities and differences between the reports include the following:
- Report header— Both reports use labels to title the reports. You can easily edit the title in the wizard report by editing the label's Caption property on the Format tab.
- Page header— Both page headers are empty and contain no controls.
- GovtType header and Detail— The from-scratch report has a single control, a text box whose source is the government type field. It tells the name of each group (Communist, constitutional monarchy, and so on). The wizard report includes both a label (GovtType) and a text box that names the group. You could easily delete the label and move the text box left for a less cluttered look.The wizard report also has labels in the GovtType header for the country, area, population, and historical rule fields. The text boxes for these fields are in the Design section. In contrast, the from-scratch report uses a columnar format that has both the field labels and text boxes in the Detail section. The tabular format of the wizard report reduces the number of required pages by two-thirds. With a little work, you could move around the labels and text boxes in the from-scratch report to achieve the same tabular layout.
- GovtType footer— The from-scratch report has label/text box pairs for group area and population totals. In the wizard report, the tabular format requires only text boxes with expressions for these sums. (You might need to widen these just a tad to see the full total for all groups.) Although there are no field labels in the wizard report, there is a label of Sum on the far left for clarity.The wizard report also includes a very long expression that tells you the number of records in the group. You might or might not find this information useful.
- Page footer— The from-scratch report has a text box that tells you the page number. The wizard report has the same, although the expression is a little more complex because it's in the "Page N of M" format.The wizard report also contains a control on the left with the expression Now, which tells you the current date.
- Report footer— As with the group totals, in the from-scratch report, there are area and population labels for the grand totals. The tabular format of the wizard dispenses with these labels, but it does include a label at the far left for Grand Total. In the wizard report, you might need to widen the text boxes just a bit to see the full totals.