Table of Contents: how to build a report with the first letter?

[Janet]

I have a POLICY Table of Contents in a database. I want to generate a report
of the items that begin with a letter - i.e., "a", then "b", etc. I'm new to
Access and can't figure out how to accomplish that. Any ideas?

Janet

 

[Jeff L]

When you create your report with the wizard, it will ask you on which
field(s) you wish to sort. Just select the one you want from the
dropdown list.

Hope that helps!

 

[guido via AccessMonster.com]

If you want to separate the a's, b's, etc. from each other do the following:
Create a group in your report (View - Sorting and Grouping). Create a group
for the desired field. Select 'Group Header' - Yes if you want to list 'A',
'B', etc. above each group. In 'Group On' select 'Prefix Characters'. The
'Group Interval' should default to 1, which is what you want (the first
character). This will create the group by the first character. To add a
header, if desired, create a text box and insert the formula: =Left([FIELD_NM]
,1) into the control source

 

[Janet]

This helped with the learning curve on how to set up the group. The next
issue is that I need to get the "A's" as one group, the "b's" as another
group, etc., in order to pull and print a report for each separate category.
In the example you gave, it sorted and labeled each category as a,b,c,d,etc.

Thanks for your help thus far.

 

[guido via AccessMonster.com]

There are several ways to accomplish that. Here is the easiest. First, set up
the report with the one group (as stated above). The following change will
prompt the user for the letter before opening the report. Leaving it blank
will produce all letters.

Open the report properties, go to the data tab. In the 'Filter', put:
[Enter Letter:] is null Or left([FIELD_NM],1)=[Enter Letter:]
Also, make sure 'Filter On' is set to 'Yes'.

Hope this helps.