Question about workaround for Access Report Width limit

[Jenaccess]

Access Version: Access 2010
Experience Level: Beginning/Intermediate-Comfortable with basic vba coding, but need a bit more guidance with anything advanced, though I'm good at following examples.

Hi,

I've been working on a custom report tool, in which the user would be able to click checkboxes on a form (up to 19 fields), and see whichever fields they chose, in order, along with calculations.

This forum has really helped me get this up and running, and due to the advice I got I was able to take this tool to the next level. If I were to rate it's usefulness and effectiveness right now, I'd give it a very good.

In order to raise this to excellent, there are additional fields I would like to add. However, this would take me over the 22" width limit for an access report. Most of the time the user will not choose to see all the fields at once, but to design for maximum flexibility I need this to be an option. That's why I need such a wide report. I've spent the past few days researching ways to get extra width, and it seems to be a hard limit with no wiggle room.

I'm just wondering if anyone could suggest a workaround. I've researched using subreports, but I'm not sure that would be a good solution for a tabular report. What I would like to do would be to create a second report for the additional fields, and syncronize them, so that to the user it would seem like one long continuous report. I'm looking for feedback on whether that's practical or even possible.

The additonal fields I want to add would be nice to have, but they are not mission critical. I'm trying to decide whether attempting to add them would be worth the effort. Any help/feedback would be much appreciated. Thank you.

 

[CJ_London]

If the data is tabular what you can do is create a datasheet form based on the data and display it in your report as a subform. This has the benefit that you can scroll left/right within the subform control (which fits within the 22", but probably you would set its width to fit on the screen) and if you want to you can freeze the first few columns - a bit like freeze panes in Excel.

 

[Jenaccess]

Hi CJ,

Thank you very much for responding!

I had to rule out using a datasheet because I have a lot of calculations in the report footer that I wouldn't be able to recreate at the query level. Does that make sense?

 

[CJ_London]

What sort of calculations? Do you mean column totals?

If so, modify your recordsource to be a union query with another query which contains the totals and sort so it appears at the bottom.

 

[Jenaccess]

The calculations are different for each field. For numeric fields such as credits and gpa, I have min, max, and average. For demographics I have counts and percentages. To hold all of these calculations, I have about 100 text boxes. That's why I chose to do the calculations at the report level rather than the query level.

I'd never really considered building down rather than across when I reached the width limit, but I could give that a try as well. Thank you for making the suggestion.

 

[Jenaccess]

I've been fooling around with the subreport, and it looks like the solution is going to work for me. I just wanted to come back and thank you for your help.