Is there any way to set an element's location in a report permamently?

[mjseim]

I thought this might be a common problem but I was unable to find a thread on the issue. Hopefully it's an obvious solution.

I have a report that has a great deal of text that is located all throughout the details section of the report. Much of the text needs to shrink and grow as necessary for the field. However, much of the text does not. That problem wasn't such a big deal considering the 'Can Shrink' and 'Can Grow' properties.

However, those elements that are properly shrinking and growing as necessary are moving the other text elements on the page around. For example, if a text box shrunk by 1" all text below it on the page is moving up by 1".

I don't want this to happen.

So, my question is: Is there any way to set an element's location in a report permamently?

 

[Rich]

If you don't want them to move up then why set the CanShrink option to yes?

 

[mjseim]

My God was that fast! Thanks for listening...

But, I'm not.

Say at the top of my report there is a text box with 'Can Shrink' and 'Can Grow' set to Yes).

At the bottom of my report there is a text box with both set to No.

The text box at the top of my report still governs the location of the text box at the bottom. Even though the SIZE of the text box at the bottom does not change, the LOCATION changes depending on the top text box's size.

 

[Rich]

Where does the textbox at the bottom of the report go if the textbox at the top of the report contains a large amount of text?

 

[mjseim]

If the Top Text Box is too big: the Bottom Text Box Gets shoved to another page. I don't have access to my database right now but if I remember correctly, I was able to get around this problem by preventing the details section from spanning two pages.

If the Top Text Box is too small (ie, it gets removed): the Bottom Text Box Gets shoved up. This is really annoying since it gets positioned in the center of my report.

 

[Rich]

Then make the textbox large enough to take your text and set the can shrink to No

 

[mjseim]

hehe... Right, I could do that.

That doesn't really solve the problem though. I'd like the Top Text Box to manipulate itself correctly and the Bottom Text Box to be set on the page.

Is there no way to keep to an element in one place while having others change?

 

[Rich]

Other than moving the textbox to the footer or using complicated code I don't think so

 

[mjseim]

Might you have a reference I could check out in regard to the code?

...Really, now that I think about it... Could I just specify 'From Left' and 'From Top' with:

Me.OBJECT.Left = 5.71
Me.OBJECT.Top = 3.45

Damnit! If only I had access to my database. I will have to check this out tonight.

Do you know if this code is correct? ie, the Left and Top? Also... I have only used this code in regard to IF statements. Can I just slap that into my code for it to work?

 

[Rich]

I can't see why you have such a problem with this and why you want to resort to code, if you code this and your first textbox grows too far it's going to overlay the second. The whole point of can shrink is to save space on the printed report, if you don't want to save space then why use it?

 

[mjseim]

I understand your confusion... in most circumstances, I agree.

However, for this purpose my details section is different than normal.

The details section is very large, designed to span one whole page for each and every entry. The report contains a myriad of information including pictures (referenced of course).

I know this isn't the intention of Access but I'm basically trying to get Access to work like publishing software for this purpose.