Access 2007 report wizard oddities

  • Thread starter Elizabeth Swoope
  • Start date
E

Elizabeth Swoope

I'm writing some introductory data management labs for my college-level
computer literacy course and I'm having problems with the report wizard.
(Please don't lecture me on the benefits and pitfalls of using the report
wizard, if there are such things. I have many years of data management
experience and would have n trouble starting from scratch but I'm teaching
beginner students who don't have such experience and wizard-generated reports
are a great starting point for the reports I have them create.)

Access is set up to use 1" margins for left, right, and top, and .25" for
bottom.

My table has the fields ID, PetName, Sex, Breed, Birth_Date, Weight, and
Neutered. None of the entries in any of the text fields is particularly long.

I want to create a PLAIN report (that is, no funny shading, graphic
headings, etc.).

If I use the Access 2007 style, I get a nice enough report except that the
ID and Birth_Date fields are too narrow (some entries show as #) and the
Neutered field is so narrow as to be almost invisible in Layout view (you can
see a sliver of the gray background of the column heading and if you are
lucky, you can highlight the column by clicking in just the right spot),
while the PetName, Sex, and Breed fields are ridiculously wide. (And then
there's the alternating row shading, but I can cope with that).

When I use the Access 2003 style, the Neutered field (a Yes/No field) isn't
even on the report, not even when I use design view. It is shown in the field
list.

In both cases, "adjust the field width" is checked.

I'm at a loss as to why the wizard seems to make very poor choices about
field widths, especially to the point of making the last field missing or
invisible (you can see the check boxes in print preview and design view, but
not in layout view). There is more than enough room for all fields to fit
even if each column is somewhat wider than the widest data. I don't mind
having the students adjust column widths manually but I'm not keen on
starting them out with putting a missing field on the report or trying to
widen one that's so narrow that only someone who knows it's there will
stumble across it.

Thanks in advance for your help. I'm not a beginner, but my students are so
I have to write this for beginners. They won't be using Access but for a
couple of weeks so there's no time to get them to advanced topics like
designing a report from scratch.

liz
 
E

Elizabeth Swoope

If I change the Field Size for the text fields to more reasonable lengths
than 255, the too-wide text fields are still somewhat too wide but the
Neutered field is on the report (using the None style, BTW) and the field
name at the top of the column is wide enough that it can be selected and
widened.

That means that the students will have to "touch" those fields (which I
wanted to avoid in this first table) but it works. Still, it shouldn't have
to be done.

liz
 

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