View Full Version : Output Report as a Large Grid


cimbar
05-03-2007, 06:53 PM
Hello kind people,

I know this must be easy, but I have so much trouble figuring out how to make the reports look the way I want them to...

Here's my basic setup: I have three main tables of data:
Times (a set of non-overlapping blocks of dates)
People
Places

I have a fourth table, Events, where each event represents one member of each of the above three tables (i.e., a person at a place at a time). There is not a 1-1 relationship (i.e., multiple people may be at the same place at the same time, and there may be time/place combinations with no person there).

What I would like to do is output this data (the Events) as a single large grid with (for example) Times across the top, Places down the left column and the remaining spaces filled with the People who are in that place at that time:


Time1 Time2 Time3 Time4
Place1 People People People People
Place2 People People People People
Place3 People People People People
Place4 People People People People


I think that should make sense (at least I hope it does).

Whenever I try to make a report to do this, I can't seem to get it to do rows and columns with the data where I want it. I have looked through some of the calendar examples posted on this forum, but they all seem to be way too complex for what I want, and modifying them seems to be a little out of my league. I'm hoping that this task is simple enough it can be done without any VBA (I have VBA experience in ppt and excel, so I am willing to tackle it if necessary).

My questions are:

(1) Is this the best way to set up my database for doing this? I'm doing other things with the data, too, but this seems to be the most complicated part of the problem, and I'm still at a point where a redesign would be fairly simple to do

(2) Can I do this with a simple report, or do I need to think about it differently?

Thank you for any suggestions you may have.

cimbar
05-04-2007, 05:44 AM
OK,
I have sort of come up with a partial solution on my own. I'm using a pivot table in "Forms," but I can't get it to output anything "professional" looking, so I'm copying the fields from the pivot table into Excel where I can then customize how the output looks, but I'd still love to hear a better, less hackish solution if anyone has any ideas -- especially how I could do this with an Access report instead of these ugly pivot tables. Maybe I can do this with cross-tab queries...
Thank you