Modifying Reports in Layout View

Depending on the purpose or intended audience, a report generated with the report tool or the report wizard may suffice. However, reports created with these tools will often need improvements.

Making edits to reports is very similar to making edits to forms. As we saw with forms, Layout View is particularly good for making changes to the structure of the report based on its data. For example, resizing a field to an appropriate width is much easier if we can see the data in the field.

Changing the Default View of a Report

The default view of a report when it is opened in Access is Report View. If the main purpose of the report is to be printed, then it is more appropriate to open the form in Print Preview. We will change the setting for this report so that it opens directly into Print Preview instead.

Step1. To move back to the first report we created today, at the top of the object workspace,

Click

We see the report, rptFacultyDeptRankParams.

Step2. To view the Property Sheet pane, if necessary, in the Ribbon,

Click the Design tab, Click

The Property Sheet pane appears on the right.

Step3. To view the properties for the report,

Click

At the top of the Property Sheet pane, it shows the selection type as Report, indicating that the whole report is selected.

Step4. To switch to the Format tab of the Property Sheet,

Click the Format tab

We see the Format properties for reports. We want to find the Default View property, which is the second field in the Format tab of the Property Sheet.

Step5. To change the default view for the report, on the Format tab of the Property Sheet,

Double-Click Default View

We see a dialog box indicating that the report must be closed and reopened to see the applied change:

Step6. To close the dialog box,

Click

Let's save our changes and reopen the report to see the change take effect.

Step7. To save the changes, on the keyboard, press:

Control key + S

The change to the view is now saved.

Step8. Close rptFacultyDeptRankParams.

We need to reopen the report to see the changes; however, we would have to scroll past all the queries to get to the report. Since we won't be using the queries again today, let's close that group in the Navigation pane.

Step9. To hide the list of queries, in the Navigation Pane,

Click

Step10. To reopen the report and see the change to the default view,

Double-Click rptFacultyDeptRankParams

The Enter the Parameter Value dialog box appears. Let's look for faculty of all ranks in departments that start with the letter A.

Step11. To view all ranks of faculty in departments that start with an A, type:

a* Enter, type: * Enter

The report now opens in Print Preview. We see the list of faculty of all ranks from the Anthropology department. Notice the number for records at the bottom of the first column is cut off.

Further Modifying the Report

There are other changes needed for this report. Try to make these changes.

This section has less guidance than the previous sections. If you would like a walk-through, watch the video Challenge Exercise: Further Modifying the Report.

Step1. Switch to Layout View.

Step2. Change the title of the report to Faculty Parameter Report.

Step3. Change the width of the fields to make them fit on the width of the page.

Step4. Change the height of the box for the count of records, so that the number is not cut off at the bottom.

Step5. Move the page number to be centered on the report.

Step6. Save the changes to the report.

Step7. Preview the report in Print Preview.

When finished, the report should look something like this: