Writing a Letter with an Access Report

[John Bigness]

When writing a letter to each of many customers with an Access Report that is
of variable length due to multiple orders in the body of the letter, a number
of issues arise.

1) How to handle the page overflow if the number of orders causes an
overflow to the second page.
2) If the first page is on letterhead stationery how do you automatically
get the second page on plain paper.
3) How do you always ensure that the next customer starts a new page.

Sample Letter is next:

Cust Name
Cust Address
Cust City, CustSt, CustZip

Dear Cust Name:

Thank you for doing business with us. Here is a list of your orders for the
past 2 years.

Date OrderNo Description Amount
9/1/05 A2345 Widgets $72.54
9/3/05 B5432 Bolts $367.46


We appreciate the opportunity to serve you.

Sincerely,

John Smith
Customer Service

end of sample letter.

Any ideas are appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[Nicholas Scarpinato]

Well, I'm not 100% sure on everything you've mentioned, but I'll see if I can
help with some of these issues...

1) How to handle the page overflow if the number of orders causes an
overflow to the second page.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean... doesn't the letter automatically
roll over to a new page? Or does it truncate and move on to the next letter?
If you could give me a better example on this one I might be better able to
answer that.

2) If the first page is on letterhead stationery how do you automatically
get the second page on plain paper.

I'm assuming you mean the first page of the letter has a letterhead built in
through Access, rather than on the paper itself. If that's the case, just
make sure that your letterhead is in the Report Header section of the report.
That way it will only print on each new letter, and not every page.

3) How do you always ensure that the next customer starts a new page.

This should be automatic. If you're printing from a table, each new record
in the table will be a new report. The only way to change that is to change
the default settings in the report itself. So there shouldn't be a problem
there... if there is, again, an example would help me to clear it up for you.

From what I understand of your issues, it sounds like the main problem is
that your report isn't set up properly. If you could tell me more about the
actual report, such as the grouping of the report, etc., I'm sure we can
figure out what the problem is for sure. But I'm pretty sure it's a matter of
putting the right things in the right groupings.