My Report = Disaster Zone

[lemieux66c]

Hi guys,

I thought I would see if you could help me out with my current issue(s) as you have done before. What I want to be able to do is create a report that would allow me to select annotations written by a certain student or by a certain topic, and I assume I would enter the wanted student or topic when I opened the report. I read an article on the Microsoft website, "Using parameters with queries and reports" that I thought would apply to my situation; however, I was unable to translate what I read to my database. I tried doing the query stated in the article, entered the parameter value that I wanted when I opened my report, but it also asked me all these values that I did not want to enter and gave me a blank report. I also searched this forum for a solution with the term of "parameters", but I think it is my abilities that is stopping me from doing it correctly.

There are another few issues with my report (when not used with any sort of parameter). For some reason it is starting on annotation 3 instead of annotation 1. Also, when there are two authors involved with an article (and the resulting annotation), annotation pages appear for each author (with the same journal information) instead of each author appearing on the same page of the annotation report - I hope that makes sense. I'm not sure if that should be a form question, but I only noticed it was an issue when trying to create a report.

I'm attaching a copy of my database with the hope that someone can help me out. I took out all information that I did not think was needed, but if took out something you may need let me know.

Thanks. It certainly is getting frustrating.

 

[shudini]

lemieux:

Download the report I modified for you. The following are the changes that I made. We'll get to the parameter element after.

1. I deleted the annotation.date field - there is no such field, so Access was prompting you to enter a value for it.
2. I moved the 'Annotation' header to the Page Header section so it will appear on every page. If you only want it on the first, move it back to Report Header.
3. I changed the grouping to AnnotationID, so now you will see all the information for each annotation, meaning if there is more than one author per annotation, they will be listed as you wanted.
4. I moved the Author information into the detail section so that the detail section will be repeated for each author per annotation.

I believe this is more like what you had in mind as far as the report goes.

Now, as far as parameters go, if you bring up the properties for the report and go to the 'Data' page, you can click on the ellipsis next to the record to bring up the Query Builder. To create a parameter query, go to the field you want to be prompted for parameters for, and in the criteria field below type the question you want to be prompted with in brackets for example [Please enter an AnnotationID] (I actually put this example in). Save the report, and now, when you run it, it should prompt you to enter a value which will then filter the query to what you wanted.

Good Luck!

 

[lemieux66c]

Thanks for the help. My annotation report looks like how I wanted it now. I'm still having some issues with duplicating your effort with the parameters into being able search to by the student last name and having it return all the annotations done by that student (I get a blank form), but I'll work on it some more and possibly ask someone at work who might know how to fix it. Anyway, thanks for the help so far!

 

[shudini]

At what point do you get a blank form? I'm having trouble figuring out at what step this is, so I can't explain why it's happening.

 

[lemieux66c]

It's all fixed! It looks like I may have had an extra space somewhere, so when I was putting in my last name in the "enter paramater value" it was giving me a report without any information. Although I'm wondering if it could have been the different versions of Access I'm using which may have caused the issue. The only oddball issue I have now is on occasion "m" from the Retrieved From field on my report doesn't appear on the report every now and then and instead shows "Retrieved Fro"...which I'm not too worried about, as it seems to show up right now..so who knows.