Help with complex reports

[stevekos07]

This is a general question. Of all the objects in Access, getting the right information in the right form on a report seems to be the most frustrating to get right. I look at tutorials, but invariably the tutorials I see cover mostly simple reports, but I get asked to generate reports with lots of levels of data summarised in all sorts of ways.

Of course most people requesting reports are used to working with Excel and have come to expect reports that are not too difficult to design in Excel but for me seem to be a real challenge.

Of course I can export queries and tables into Excel and work with them there, but I would like to be able to work with them within Access.

What I need is a good source of information on how to design reports, and how to cut slice and dice data in a variety of ways.

Any suggestions?

 

[Ranman256]

And you mean Access reports, not excel 'reports'?
Access reports don't do much but display data.
All the slice/dice is done in queries.

 

[sxschech]

If you are talking about pre-defined summary reports (that is not changing summary levels etc live) then access reports can summarize using the groupings, you could even have a report with only groupings and no detail section if set up properly and this could be done with a table directly or a simple select * from x query (no sums or group bys needed). To mimic slice and dice you would need to set up several reports or use vba to modify the groupings. Other times, you may need to use a report with a subreport in order to provide a certain look or to see different views of the data on same page.

 

[stevekos07]

If you are talking about pre-defined summary reports (that is not changing summary levels etc live) then access reports can summarize using the groupings, you could even have a report with only groupings and no detail section if set up properly and this could be done with a table directly or a simple select * from x query (no sums or group bys needed). To mimic slice and dice you would need to set up several reports or use vba to modify the groupings. Other times, you may need to use a report with a subreport in order to provide a certain look or to see different views of the data on same page.

I guess I will have to search out some good tutorials on this. I have produced quite a lot of reports, but sometimes it is hard to figure out exactly what Ineed to do with the data to get what I want. I will have to play around with groupings only or subreports a bit more as you suggest.

 

[sxschech]

I can give you some pointers if you have a sample mock up or description of what you are trying to develop.