Printing forms -datasheet back colour dissappears

[rudeboymcc]

Hi. I have a split form with lot of Custom formatting on the background colours depending on the date.

When vieing on the pc it works fine. When I go to print preview however, all the conditional formatiing is ignored and it goes back to the white/alternate row colour scheme.

This is for the datasheeet portion btw. Is there any way round this?

Just noticed even if I copy the datasheet and paste it into excel it loses the background colours as well. V frustrating!

I know I should make a report but the client wants to be able to show/hide the columns he chooses, AND in with a report I find conditional formatting only works on the font colour and not on the back colour.

 

[vbaInet]

You're confusing things here. First of all a form doesn't have Print Preview mode so are you talking about a report or a form?

Secondly, when you copy from a datasheet you're copying the raw data not the cosmetics.

Thirdly, setting the backcolor property of controls in reports using conditional formatting works. You just have to ensure that the Back Style property is set to Normal.

If you're having difficulty with the Split Form (which is not programmable), use a subform.

 

[rudeboymcc]

You're confusing things here. First of all a form doesn't have Print Preview mode so are you talking about a report or a form?

Secondly, when you copy from a datasheet you're copying the raw data not the cosmetics.

Thirdly, setting the backcolor property of controls in reports using conditional formatting works. You just have to ensure that the Back Style property is set to Normal.

If you're having difficulty with the Split Form (which is not programmable), use a subform.

I'm talking about forms (I even gave a reason I'm not using a report). If you open a form, go to file>print> print preview, it shows a print preview of how the form would print if you pressed ctrl+p.

If copying from a datasheet is only raw data and not cosmetics, then why is the font colour copied over?

No matter what I tried with my reports, the conditional formatting did not set the back colour, even with the style set to normal, but that doesnt; matter because I don't want to use reports.

I don't see how a subform would be more helpful, as it would be a subform with a datasheet as its source, which isn't programmable either.

The only work around I've found so far is to use a continuous form, which works even when i copy it to excel. But this loses the ability to hide/show columns, adn to sort the columns, so i have to manualy do that, which I was hoping to avoid.

 

[vbaInet]

Ah, print preview under Print options. Strange it doesn't show there, it should. Maybe there's something wrong with your contional formatting statement. What was the condition you put?

Not cosmetics in those terms. Conditional Formatting isn't really part of the control's properties and as a result exports ignore the condition set. It could be because Excel has its own Conditional Formatting so you would need to programatically apply it to the xls doc after exporting.

It depends what you want to do with the subform? A subform is very programmable.

The topic of hiding/showing the columns programatically has been discussed on here a few times. Try an advanced search for those terms. It would require that you create your own context menus that will implement the ColumnHidden property.

 

[boblarson]

I'm talking about forms (I even gave a reason I'm not using a report).

The reason given was rebutted by vbaInet. Conditional Formatting does in fact work with back color on a report. A common error is not changing the backstyle from Transparent to Normal which if it isn't done will not show the conditional formatting.

This is how my Access instructor explained things many, many years ago to me. Forms are designed to work with and view on screen. That's not to say that they can't be printed, but Reports are designed to have formatting follow over when printed. Formatting items in access is like this -

Tables - you can change a few things like font, font color and justification.

Queries - pretty much the same as tables

Forms - you can set a few more options for printing

Reports - gives you everything to be available for printing as that is one of the things they were designed specifically to do.

So, if you want specific formatting to be able to come through when printing, build a report. A form may cut it some of the time, but not as often as a report will.