Marshall said:
M said:
Marshall said:
M G Henry wrote:
Marshall Barton wrote:
M G Henry wrote:
There are parts of each page that use option groups to show if the
person filling out the form selected yes, no or n/a and there are other
parts of the report that build statements thruough queries that are
based on questions on the form.
I strongly suggest you use a single report.
The secret to creating a report is to organize the needed
data using a query. Once you have a query that selects the
desired data, the report should be pretty easy to create by
specify groups and using various property settings (e.g.
KeepTogether, ForceNewPage, etc).
If it is too difficult to gather the data using a single
query (pretty unlikely), then create subreports for each
independent part of the data.
If you need more specific assistance, please post details of
about the tables and their fields along with how they should
appear in the report.
This project originated from having a word document that has 12
different pages in it, there is a header page, that I have built into a
header table ... that table has a primary key that is an autonumber
field called statement number that I am using to keep the other tables
linked together...
Each of the other 11 tables (pages) have a top section where there are
up to 10-15 statements that have an option group as these statements
have a possible answer of yes, no or n/a, and the report that they want
to have generate will also use an option group with these same 3
options to show which of the 3 was chosen when the document was filled
out.
in each table (page) under this section, there is another series of
questions that are yes/no type fields and some of these questions have
text that link into them.
There are quite a few quesitons that are for example... does the
customer require purge processing yes no. if yes is chosen then a
statement is build that says [customer name] (from the header page)
will require purge processing. if the answer "no" is slected then
nothing should appear on the report. An example of the yes/no with
text would be...the question "are there variable images involved in
this project" yes no and under that quesion would be the next
statement "describe the variable images" ( followed by the text field)
[varimg] what this needs to generate in the report is a statement
either for a yes answer being ... " There will be variable images
involved in this project" follwed by another statment ... the
variable images will be [varimg] if the answer to the question is no,
then there should be nothing on the report whatsoever.
I have built queries that use IIF commands to check the values of the
various yes no options and build the appropriate statements using
concantenations or simple statements.
the form section of this database works fine and loads the tables
appropriately and when I view the queries, the IIF commands build the
statements correctly, it is just a matter of laying down everything
after the header page to both flow correctly and hopefully result in a
report that will not have huge gaps of white space in it where there
are answers of "no" to the questions contained in the form.
The way that this 12 page form and subsequent report exists is that
there are probably about 300 questions that are made up thought the
entire project.
The only question I see in there is how to avoid blank space
for questions that don't appear. Presumably your query is
supplying Null or "" (ZLS - zero length string) values for
the suppressed questions. In this case and as long as the
report has no visible controls in the same horizontal
"band", then you can set the question text box's and its
section's CanShrink property to Yes.
If there are some other (non text box) controls that need to
be made invisible (e.g. options), then use some VBA code in
the section's Format event:
Me.othercontrol.Visible = (Nz(Me.questionx, "") = "")
The thing is that I don't have very much experience in building forms
from scratch, and I had read that I will run into a 22" length limit...
I started to build the report in fact and was told that the length of
the form exceeded the maximum length... so I am not sure that I am
building it correctly...
There was also a width issue but that was easily fixed, it is getting
all 12 pages of potentially 11" report onto one report that is also
proving to be frustrating...
should I be using groupings ?? and if so I have 12 pags and am only
allowed 10 groups, or is there a way around that ??
Sorry for my lack of understanding, but I have relied too heavily on
wizzards to get my reports created and I do not have a good
understanding of how the report structure can be built from scratch...
I presume that you using the word "form" when you mean to
use "report".
I am really having trouble picturing what you are trying
accomplish and what data tables and fields you want in the
report. Almost all reports have a record source query and
the report displays each record's data by using bound
controls in the detail section (which is commonly less than
a half an inch high). I do not understand how your report's
data and/or layout differs from the norm.
Exceeding 22" for a section of a report is extrordinarily
unusual. Except for an odd kind of unbound report, I don't
think I have ever seen one of these monsters. Go back to my
earlier thoughts about creating a query to organize the data
or use a subreport for each independent set of data and see
if you can relate to any of that or explain how and why your
situation is different.
Marsh,
I apologize for not making myself clearer, I have only been writing to
groups for a few weeks and this is a tough report design situation... (
or maybe I am just making it tough )...
This project comes out of a 300 + question questionairre that was
originally done using Microsoft Word.
The part of the original pages that used option groups was well suited
to Word, because it was just a check box on a word form.
The part that did not suit Word well was the part where the questions
were just yes/no ( approx 60% of the questions. ) The reason was, that
if the answer to the question was yes, the final word document had to
be rewritten ( for example we work with variable images as part of the
every day work that we do... so the quesion would be asked.... "does
this project involve variable images ? " if the answer to this
question was no, reference to it would always be deleted in the final
document.
If the answer was yes, below it would be a question describe the
variable images... so when the person would work with this document in
word, he/she would have to rewrite the question as a statement... ie:
This project involves variable images. The variable images are a
corporate logo, a corporate image...... )
The reason why I see that this is more suited to an Access application
is because the way that the yes/no questions were (when answerd as yes
) and turned into statments was always a similar pattern, one that
could be written into IIF statements very effectively.
The reporting issue comes in that there are 300+ different questions,
which in a word document takes up 12 different pages of data to type
out. When I go to manually layout a page in a report, ( something I
have very little experience in ) I have a few limitations that I am
running into. I cannot physically layout 300+ questions in 11" .... I
am not sure if I should use groupings to break this down, but if I do,
I still can only put down 10 groups ( no way to fit 12 pages )
I know that I can use subreports and that they can be based on forms,
just not sure if that is the direction I should be going in... or if I
should be building smaller reports and basing the subreports on these
reports....
The other thing is that there are parts of each of the 12 pages that
use option groups, they are to be reported just like they appear in the
forms, word for word, character for character...
With the yes/no quesitons, if the answer is no, nothing should appear (
this I am covering in the building of the query with null fields being
assigned to no answers. if the answer is yes, I can build real nice
statements using IIF command and concantenations.) It all looks good,
what I have built so far in the tables and the queries.
The problem lies in putting down the non option group statements and
making the report appear to flow, without gaps... That is my goal, so
if each of the 12 pages is only 50% filled out with yes responses, say,
I would like to end up with a 6+ page report and not a 12 page report
every time. 75% filled out yes, then 8pg+ report, etc....
I am sorry that I cannot make myself clearer in fewer words,
I greatly appreciate your time and consideration....
M G Henry