Print evenly down page (1 Viewer)

[ChristopherM]

I want to print a report (no headers or footers) with two records per A4 page, so that, when I cut the page exactly in half, horizontally, each record will start exactly the same distance from the top of the new A5 page. The top and bottom margin are the same (minimum) but the second record prints too high up. When I stretch the report size, well before the second record is forced down to its correct position, the report switches to one record per A4 page.

Can anyone help? Thanks

 

[Atomic Shrimp]

Is it the detail section that you're stretching?
Have you tried shrinking the report and page header sections down to nothing?
Have you tried strtching the height of the actual text fields in the detail section?
(I haven't tested any of these suggestions BTW)

My other thought on this is that some printer drivers will do things like this for you, you would then format the report to landscape and tell the printer driver to print two pages per sheet

HTH

Mike

 

[ChristopherM]

Thanks for your help - the header and footer sections are shrunk to nothing, it is only the detail that exists. The detail itself contains a fair amount of blank space between the fields but I am not sure why this should cause a problem

 

[Atomic Shrimp]

I've had a little play with one of my own reports and it seems to be fairly straightforward to get a report like you describe simply by stretching the detail section (all of the header sections are turned off from the View menu).

When you say that there is space between your fields, do you mean in design view, and do you mean vertical space?

Mike

[This message has been edited by Mike Gurman (edited 12-05-2000).]

 

[ChristopherM]

Thanks for your reply. Yes there is vertical space between fields in the report when viewed in design view (it is actually designed to print end-of-term reports which have to be on A5 ie half sheets of A4). When I try stretching the detail section (the only existing section) it prints only one record per A4 page - shrink the detail a little so it prints 2 records and the second one is too high up the page. I have set the top and bottom margins to the minimum Access will accept. My print driver will not let me alter the unprintable area of the page and I get the same problem in preview as well as print. Have you got any further ideas?

 

[Richie]

Why don't you print to A5 then?

 

[ChristopherM]

The problem with printing to A5 is a physical one with the printer - the default paper tray cannot take A5 and the multipurpose / manual tray can only take a very limited number of sheets and even then frequently mis-feeds or jams - the only way round it is to use manual feed and hit <enter> to print each sheet. Because this is such a time consuming purpose I am trying to find a way of printing on A4

 

[Fornatian]

Set your report up so it prints one per page.
Find out how many pages you want to print then put half the sheets of paper you need in the printer. When the printer asks for more paper - put the printed sheets back in upside down so you are now printing on the bottom part of the page.

A bit lateral maybe?

Ian

 

[Richie]

Maybe another useless question but have you set it to print landscape?

 

[ChristopherM]

No - the page is set to portrait. But I like Ian's idea of printing half the records at a time and then reversing the paper - at least I don't lose half the paper as I do at the moment printing one record per form! I just thought that it should be possible in Microsoft's best selling database program to print 2 records evenly to a page - in twenty years of using databases I have never come across one in which you could not carry out this pretty basic function.

 

[Atomic Shrimp]

I see what is happening now that I can duplicate the problem; it is possible to get two records on every page, but it is not possible to get the second record per page far enough down the page.

I managed to get round this on my own system by carefully stretching the detail section so that you get two records per page, then moving all of the objects in the detail section DOWN, so that there is blank space at the top of the detail section. It takes a bit of fiddling to get it aligned perfectly, but it is possible this way.

I must confess that reversing the paper halfway is the approach that I have often used in the past, simply because this results in the pages all being printed exactly alike with the records the same distance from the top edge, plus the cut edge of the paper is always at the bottom of the report.

HTH

Mike

 

[Richie]

Surely therein lies your problem if A5 is A4 cut in halve horizontally then you have to print to A4 as landscape making sure that the report only occupies the left hand side enabling you to turn the paper around for the next page.

 

[Atomic Shrimp]

I think what Christopher is trying to achieve is printing 2 x Landscape A5 onto one sheet of A4, so the A4 needs to be portrait, with one A5 page above another.

 

[ChristopherM]

Mike, you are quite correct about what I am trying to achieve. In your previous message you said you got the report to space evenly by moving all the objects down to the bottom of the detail leaving the blank space at the top. Do you mean that you expanded the objects so that there was no blank space between the top of the top object and the bottom of the detail? I could try doing this but I might find it a bit tricky as I have to follow a predetermined layout. Anyway, thanks for your help.

 

[Atomic Shrimp]

Hi Christopher

All I did was to expand the detail section until only two records would fit on a page, then select all of the objects in the detail section and move them down a bit (it's easier to do this with <ctrl> and the down arrow, rather than dragging with the mouse, which can be a bit clumsy)

This results in the second A5 section coming out below the middle of the A4 sheet.

You still end up with more white space at the top of the first A5 section than the second, but this is seems to be largely due to the fact that Access does not consider the top margin as part of the page, it might be possible work around this by having a field that 'CanGrow' and making it bigger on even numbered records, thus pushing the second A5 section down a bit more, but I'm afraid I can't take that idea anywhere past the theory stage.

HTH

Mike

[This message has been edited by Mike Gurman (edited 12-07-2000).]

 

[Richie]

Sorry I obviously didn't explain clearly enough. If you want A5 portrait to print to A4 portrait you have to design the page initially to fit width wise to A5 landscape, when you switch to A4 portrait the report will print the way you wan't, it took me less than 5mins. to set up. Every page printed correctly from the top allowing the paper to be turned for the second run.
HTH

 

[ChristopherM]

After much experimentation, and a lot of false starts, I have come up with the solution to evenly spacing two reords on a page (and with minor mods it could be extended to more records)as long as the report contains only a detail section. As far as I can see it is pretty watertight - it works in both preview and print, and you can preview back and forth etc without losing the format. You can also change printers (which affects the top margin) without causing problems. However, it does require a fair amount of coding and is quite fiddly so I won't post it unless there is anyone out there who really needs. If so, let me know.