Field Concatenation

[whenthegeeseinvade]

Dear Experts,

I have a string field whose value will appear many hundreds of times on a report and would like to make the report fit on as few pages as possible. As the length of the string varies greatly, I cannot use columns and am therefore trying to create a "Master String" which will concatenate all the values of the individual fields and allow me to print their values in a single text box which will be the full page width.

Firstly, I have no idea how to do this and secondly I don't know if there is a limit to the number of characters I could display on a single report field. I may need up to 500 characters per Master String.

Any help would be great.

Many thanks,

Laurence

 

[gemma-the-husky]

if a report starts to appear unnatural i would consider going back to the drawing board

what about saving the data in a spreadsheet, and letting users review the spreadsheet

 

[whenthegeeseinvade]

Thanks Gemma

Please see the attached graphic to show what I am trying to do.

I need to lay out the report to create a usable form such as the extract from the word document at the top from the access data shown below.

The info changes all the time and it is a real pain updating the 12 page Word document with the new data, revised formatting etc.

Any further help would be great.

Cheers,

Laurence

 

[DevastatioN]

I believe you may be misunderstanding how an Access Report can work. An Access report does not have to be columns, the top of your report graphic can be done in Access (The bottom part looks like a subreport list).

When you design the report and it's in coliumns, in design view you can remove the column headings section, and make the detail section longer. Then you can place your labels and fields inside the detail section as you want it to appear.

For example, in your graphic I would add the top left column heading as a label, and then below it add the field that is associated with it. Below that can be another label, and another field etc. You can then format the borders and other things to make it look like a table.

An Access report doesn't have to be done in columns, as long as the block of information in the detail all relates. If you aren't following me correctly, I can do up a quick example that may help you.

EDIT: After rereading your post over and over I may not be understanding what you are trying to do. You wish to create an access report that looks like that Word Document Template in the top of your picture, is that correct?

 

[whenthegeeseinvade]

Yes, I'm trying to create a report like the top graphic from the information below. This is to produce a compact, easy to read costing sheet. As you can see, each item can consist of different length text strings. This results in a report with a great deal of waste space.

I can add additional fields to categorise the items as required but the main issue I am having is how to cause the records to be printed across the page as if they were being listed in a paragraph, rather than one below the other in standard report fashion.

There is only one field in the body of the report but I want to format the report in paragraph fashion as below;

RecordText########1____ xxx RecordText####2____ xxx RecordText#####################3____ xxx
RecordText#4____ xxx RecordText#######5____ xxx

(very little wasted space)

Instead of tabulated;

RecordText########1____ xxx
RecordText####2____ xxx RecordText#####################3____ xxx
RecordText#4____ xxx
RecordText#######5____ xxx

(lots of wasted space)

Thanks for your help.

Laurence