An autoreport is a quick way to get fields onto a simple report, especially if you want to see all of the fields.
Advantage: It's a fast one-click process.
Disadvantages:
The Report Wizard can create several simple reports and automates creating totals.
Advantages:
Once you have controls on the report, you can use Design View to move, resize, or format parts of the report.
![]() |
Step-by-Step: Create Report |
![]() |
What you will learn: | to create a report with AutoReport to resize controls in Layout View to create a report with Report Wizard to navigate pages in a report Print Preview to zoom the report preview size to edit with Property Sheet to edit with ribbon |
Start with: ,
, mytrips-Lastname-Firstname.accdb from previous lesson
A simple report is very easy to create with AutoReport. There are a number of things you could do to improve the layout. For this lesson we will make just a few changes. Later you will learn how to change all the characteristics of a report.
Access 2007:
> Manage > Back Up Database
Access 2010: File > Save and Publish > Back Up Database > Save As button
Access 2013, 2016: File > Save As > Back Up Database > Save As button
On the Create ribbon tab click the button Report
.
The screen may blink and you may briefly see a minimized window at the
bottom of your Access window while Access creates the autoreport. The new
report will open automatically in Layout View.
The report in this case is almost certainly too wide to fit in your window.
What your report looks like: Below is picture of the autoreport. Click on the picture to see it at normal size. Then you can scroll both horizontally and vertically. The report is slightly different in Access 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016.
Pages: How many sheets of paper will it take to print this autoreport?
Scrolling horizontally you can see two page breaks (dashed vertical lines). That means that there will be at least 3 sheets of paper using Letter size paper. Will the 8 records fit vertically on one sheet? The Layout View does not give any hints! Only in Print Preview can you see the separate pages.
Layout: All of the fields are in a table, like a spreadsheet. This is not like earlier versions of Access.
Cell Size: There seems to be a default minimum cell width for each data type. Cell height is allowed to grow large enough to show all of the cell's contents. In this report, the whole row has to be tall enough to handle the Diary field, which needs the most space for most records. That results in lots and lots of wasted space.
Grand Total: The autoreport put in a control that shows the total cost of all trips in the report. That's handy. But the control is not tall enough for the number to show clearly. That's odd.
AutoReport Page Numbers: Did you notice the 'Page 1 of 1' at the bottom of this autoreport? That clearly does not match what the dashed lines for page breaks tell us. While you are in Layout or Report View, Access sees the whole report as one very wide page. In this report the paper would have to be 21 inches wide. Not a common size! This is odd because the vertical lines show that Access knows it will take at least three pages.
Records out
of order or missing:
The report shows the records in the same way that the original source does, including any
sorting or filtering that you left in place.
Simple Solution: (for AutoReports)
Close and delete the AutoReport. Open the source table or query and remove
any filters, sort in the order that you want for the report, save the table or query. Recreate your
AutoReport.
Advanced Solution: (for complex or formatted reports that you don't want to
recreate)
Open the report in Report Design View. Open the Property Sheet for the report.
Remove the entry in the OrderBy and Filter properties and change the property Order By On Load to No.
In both Layout View and Design View, if you move or resize a control, you are changing that control for ALL records. Use Layout View for changes that might cut off part of the data in the control. You can scroll through records to see if you have allowed enough space.
Experiment: Resizing in
Layout View
Do you suppose that you could resize the controls to make a record fit on one page?
Open Print Preview of your customized autoreport.
There are still 6 pages, but some of them have no data, just colored bars and the page footer. That is from the report's width being set to 21".
Your report may look quite different from the illustration.
We could spend some time fixing this autoreport, but it would still waste a lot of space in each record. Instead let's try the Report Wizard.
After just a little playing around with the autoreport, it seems clear that this layout is often not a good choice, if there are many fields to show or if some fields have a lot more text to show than others. The Report Wizard gives you many more options. It is a big help in getting a report started when you want to group and subtotal results. That can be rather tricky to set up manually.
On the Create ribbon tab click the button Report Wizard
.
The Report Wizard dialog opens.
On this page of the dialog, you will pick which items to use as a source from the Tables/Queries drop list. For each one you pick, you then pick one or more fields in the Available Fields and move them to the Selected Fields column. This is MUCH more flexible than the Report button!
Click the Next > button to move to the next page of the dialog.
The next page lets you group records together, for example by TravelAgent. We won't do that this time.
If necessary, click the < button to remove grouping.
Click on the Next > button to advance to the next page of the dialog.
The next page lets you sort, using up to four fields.
Click on the Next > button to advance to the next page of the dialog.
There are several choices for the layout for the report. Which ones you see depends on the choice you made about grouping. Since we did not group for this report, there are three layouts.
Click on the radio button for Columnar to select it.
This will put the controls into a single column.
Leave the default orientation, Portrait, and the check mark in the box 'Adjust the field width so all fields fit on a page'.
Click on the Finish button.
Access now creates the report with the same name as the source table Trips, and opens it in Print Preview.
If you had continued to the Next step in the wizard, you could have chosen a different name for the report before it was created.
Report opens in Print Preview
Print Preview shows one page at a time by default.
The Navigation bar and the navigation keys on your keyboard can all help you get around in the preview of your report. You cannot use the scroll bars or mouse wheel to change to pages that are not already in the display.
Try the navigation keys:
arrow keys, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down
These keys move the page inside the window when the preview shows less than the whole page. (See next section about Zoom.)
If the whole page shows AND if the focus is not on the page itself, then the keys move you from page to page but the scroll wheel still will not.
Problem: Navigation keys don't do anything.
You clicked with the mouse to zoom in and then to zoom
back out. The focus is still on the page.
Solution: Click in a background area outside the page. The window shows the whole page. Press the navigation key you want to use.
Shortly we will move to Report Design View where you can fix that.
Sometimes you need to see a whole page at a time. Sometimes you need the page to be large enough to read the text on the screen. Access lets you adjust the size to suit your task using the Zoom box or slider or by using the mouse.
Click on the page.
The size changes. The mouse pointer now
has the Zoom Out shape (smaller
text).
Can you read the text now? That will depend on what Zoom size was used before.
Click the % toggle button at the left of the Zoom slider.
On my monitor, when Access is maximized, 75% is the same size as Fit to Window for a single page.
When you are ready to continue...
The report itself and each control, label, line, or section of the report has its own properties. Properties control the look and behavior of the object. The properties like OnLoad and OnFocus tell Access to do something when the event occurs. This might be to do a calculation or to show or hide another window or to refresh the data so that the latest data is showing.
So many choices can get VERY confusing. Happily, most of the properties can be left alone most of the time. Many of the properties that are frequently used can be set with buttons on the Report Design Tools ribbon tab.
Right click on the title tab for the report and select Design View.
The Design View opens.
The Detail section shows the controls for a record. All records use the same controls. In Design View you cannot see the actual data like you did in Layout View.
Point of Confusion: The identifying text in the controls is neatly aligned to the left, but the data may not have this alignment.
If necessary, click on the All tab in the Property Sheet.
The other tabs show a subset of these properties to help you find properties quickly. The list of properties on the All tab is very long and it is not alphabetized.
Problem:
Properties Sheet is not visible
Solution: Click on the
Property Sheet button on the Report Design Tools: Design ribbon tab.
Scroll the list to see all of the properties that you can control.
Some may not make sense yet. Some are not often changed.
Click on several entries and check out what choices you have.
Most properties show a down arrow which opens a list of choices. Some have an ellipsis button (3 dots) which opens a dialog. Some require you to type a value like a size.
Look at the left end of the Status Bar for a message about the current property.
Record Source is where the data is coming from. You only see the name, not whether it is a table or a query. This is one reason why you need a method of naming your objects that makes it clear what kind of object it is.
Caption is what shows on the tab as the title. It does not have to be the same as what shows on the report itself.
Click in the Design area on the Report Header bar.
The bar 'Report Header' turns black and that whole section of the report is selected. This section contains only the label, Trips Report Wizard.
Inspect the Property Sheet which shows the Selection type is 'Section' and the drop list shows 'ReportHeader'.
There are a lot fewer properties than the report itself had.
Similarly, select and inspect the properties for other sections of the report.
The Page Header and Report Footer will not show in this report. The Height property is set to 0" for these sections. No space shows in the Design area for these two sections.
Find the Can Grow property.
The Property is on the All tab and also on the Format tab. Look toward the end of the list in the ALL tab. It is 6th from the bottom on the Format tab, which is a much shorter list than the All tab shows.
The Can Grow property is set to Yes, which allows this control to expand automatically for records that have a lot of text in this field. Sweet feature! It's just a bit hard to find in the list. The Report Wizard was pretty smart to set this feature for you.
The text and numbers in several controls are not lining up neatly with the others. The problem is not with the control itself but with the alignment of the contents of the control. Most numbers, including currency, are right aligned by default. But text is left aligned by default. So, for example, the amount in the Cost control is stuck over at the right edge of its text box. We can use the Property Sheet or the ribbon buttons to adjust the alignment in the box and/or the size of the control to get a better looking result.
You can make some changes directly in the Design View but other changes can only be made in the Property Sheet.
In the Design area, click the control DateStarted to select it.