Printing in Access most often means printing a report. The features discussed for printing forms also apply to reports. The Page Setup dialog, the Property Sheet, and the Print dialog control what will print and how it will print.
The most common error in printing reports is failing to look at Print Preview carefully before printing! Looking first will save you a lot of paper, ink/toner, and time.
Check that no extra pages are printing and that your fields show all of their contents. You have to inspect records with lots of data in Memo/Long Text fields to be sure that they are growing properly.
Pages from a printed report from the Star Wars Collectibles database
You can make the same type of changes to reports as you just did for a form. The Property Sheet is full of choices!
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Step-by-Step: Print Report |
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What you will learn: | to use Error Checking and Property Sheet to add a label to print a specific page of a report |
Start with: mytrips-Lastname-Firstname.accdb from a previous lesson
First you need to look at the Print Preview to see if anything needs fixing.
Getting to Print Preview is a lot easier for a report. It's a view listed with all methods.
For practice, you are going to create a problem that may not be there at the moment.
Switch to Design View.
Click the Select Report box.
An error Smart Tag appears.
Hover over the Error Checking Options tag.
A down arrow appears.
Click the down arrow in the Error Checking Options tag.
A menu appears.
The top part tells you what is wrong. The bottom part provides shortcuts to things you might want to do to fix the problem.
In this case you don't know yet what you want to do. This first thing to figure out is how wide the margins are. You might be able to make them smaller.
Click on Edit Margins.
The Page Setup dialog opens to the Print Options tabs. The left and right margins are 0.25". Most printers cannot print any closer to the edge of the page than this, so you should not make the margins smaller.
Left margin + Right Margin = 0.5" and the paper is 8.5" wide.
That leaves 8" for the report itself on the page. Before you can change the Width property, you must move or resize any controls that wound up on the second page.
If necessary, drag the image to the left. Drop when its right edge is at 7.75" on the horizontal ruler.
You should not need to adjust the vertical position of the image.
As you drag, an outline shows where the image will be if you drop. Both rulers shows in black where the image will fit.
In the Property Sheet with Report showing as Selected, change the Width property to 8" and press ENTER.
If you positioned everything correctly, your new value was accepted. If something is still too far to the right, the old width reappears.
Verify Changes: Always look to see if a value you entered in the Property Sheet was accepted. You do not get a warning if your change was rejected. It just resets to the previous value.
Check Lines: If a report or form is stubborn about its width and you cannot see a reason, look in Form or Report view for a horizontal line that is at the bottom or top of a section in Design View. These lines blend into the section bars and can be impossible to see in Design View. You may have to enlarge the section so you can select the line to resize it and then reduce the section size again.
Just like for the form you printed, you need to have your name on this document, too. You will put your name in a new label in the footer. This time there are two controls already there. Not to worry!
Switch to Design View.
In the Page Footer there are two controls. The control on the left creates the date and aligns the date to the left. The control on the right creates the page number and aligns its result to the right. That leaves a lot of space in the middle for your name, even though the two controls are very wide in Design View.
If necessary, drag the new label to center it in the Page Footer horizontally and to line it up with the other two controls.
(There is no command that will center a control horizontally on the page.)
If your name is long, the label may need to overlap the controls to get it centered on the page. That's OK. The actual values that show on the page are far to the sides. You won't overlap the text.
Centering Control: The grid lines are there to help you position objects. The report is 8" wide, so the middle of the width is the grid line at 4". The resizing handle in the middle of the top edge of the label should be lined up with the 4" grid line. That will center the control on the 4" line.
Aligning with other controls: To get several controls lined up, you must select them all. Then you can use choices on the Align button on the Report Design Tools: Arrange tab or on the right click menu.