Reports

To create a report click on the Reports Button and click the New button. The New Report dialog box displays. Select the table (or view) upon which the form is to be based and click the Report Wizards button. Report Wizards is to reports what Form Wizards is to forms: a series of dialog boxes, very similar to those displayed by Form Wizards, determine what information will appear on the form and how it is sorted.

By way of example a report which contains Branch and Account information will be created. The report is to contain information about each Branch and details of Accounts managed (including information about the Account Owners and Transactions carried out). To do this the designer can either:

or as in the example below:

· Create a query which joins the Branch and Account tables.

· Embed within that linked sub-reports for Transactions and Account-Ownership.

The report (left) was generated using Report Wizards, specifying the query (above left) as the source table/query, requiring a single-column style, with all fields appearing, and a sort order of Branch Id followed by Account Id

 

In the diagram shown, a Group Header has been created for both Branch Id and Account Id (using the Sorting and Grouping Button on the Toolbar) in order to highlight those fields as they change, and Text Boxes and Labels have been moved into the appropriate Header from the Detail section. Just as a form can be included as a sub-form in a master form, so a report can be included as a sub-report of a master report.

The illustration (left) shows a report based on the query Account Owner Summary (see Figure 36). It will display the Person (identifying number) and Name of Account Owners.

To embed this report in the master report shown:

In the figure above, the Branch and Account Headers have been filled with black and grey respectively using the Palette to make them stand out, and a sub-report detailing Transactions has been added.

The Print Preview button on the Tool bar can be used to look at the output at any time in the design process. The output from the report above is illustrated below.

In the above example Text boxes contain information that comes directly from a table or query - the Control Source property of these controls is a field name. The Control Source can however be:

For example, to display the sum of all balances of Accounts for each Branch, the designer could create a Branch Id Group Footer and put in it a Text Box with its Control Source property set to =Sum([Balance]).