Recipe 3.3 Create a Report with Multiple Columns

3.3.1 Problem

You want to print a two-column, phone-book-style report with large initial capital letters to set off each alphabetical grouping. There is no Report Wizard for creating such a report, and you don't see a Column property to set up the number of columns you want. How can you make a multiple-column report in Access?

3.3.2 Solution

There is a way to format a report for multiple columns, but it's not where you might look for it, on a report's properties sheet or the report design menu. Instead, you'll find it on the Columns tab of the Page Setup dialog. This solution guides you through setting up a multiple-column, phone-book-style report that includes a large drop cap for each letter of the alphabet.

Follow these steps to create your own multiple-column report:

Figure 3-5. The Columns tab of the Page Setup dialog

Table 3-3. The Page Setup dialog Layout settings

Setting	Purpose	Sample
Number of Columns	Number of columns.	2
Row Spacing	Extra space, in inches, between rows.	0
Column Spacing	Extra space, in inches, between columns.	0.25"
Column Size: Width	Width of each column.	3"
Column Size: Height	Height of each column.	1.0625"
Same as Detail	When you check this, Access will copy the width and height of the report's detail section into the Width and Height controls.	Unchecked
Layout Column	Select "Down, then Across" for snaking columns or "Across, then Down" for mailing-label-style columns.	Down, then Across

Follow these additional steps to create the first letter grouping shown in Figure 3-7:

Table 3-4. Sorting and Grouping settings for rptPhoneBook

Setting	First Company field	Second Company field
Field/Expression	Company	Company
Sort Order	Ascending	Ascending
Group Header	Yes	No
Group Footer	No	No
Group On	Prefix Characters	Each Value
Group Interval	1	1
Keep Together	No	No

Table 3-5. Property settings for rptPhoneBook

Property	Setting
Name	txtFirstLetter
ControlSource	=Left([Company],1)
Width	0.4375"
Height	0.4375"
BackColor	12632256 (grey)
ForeColor	0 (black)
FontName	Arial
FontSize	24
FontWeight	Bold

Figure 3-6. The completed rptPhoneBook report in design view

Now, load 03-03.MDB. The tblCompanyAddresses table contains a list of businesses and their addresses and phone numbers. Open rptPhoneBook in preview view. This report prints the data in two snaking (newspaper-style) columns (see Figure 3-7).

Figure 3-7. The two-column rptPhoneBook report

3.3.3 Discussion

When you create a report, Access assumes you want only one column unless you specify otherwise. If you want more than one column, you must adjust the layout properties of the page using the Columns tab of the Page Setup dialog. The key settings are Number of Columns, Column Spacing (the extra margin between columns), Width (the width of each column), and Column Layout (whether Access first prints an entire column or an entire row). If you want to produce snaking-column (newspaper-style) reports, select "Down, then Across" for Column Layout; for mailing-label-type reports, choose "Across, then Down". For most purposes, you can ignore the other settings.

You will usually create groups in reports that break on the value of a field itself. For example, grouping on Company will trigger a new group for each new unique value of the Company field. Access, however, includes two group properties that allow you to alter the frequency of groupings: GroupOn and GroupInterval. Depending on the data type of the grouping field (see Table 3-6), you can use GroupOn to group on some subset of characters (Text), a range of numbers (Number, Currency), or a period of time (Date/Time). Using the GroupInterval property, you can adjust the grouping further—for example, you could break on the first two characters of a name, every $10, or every two months.

Table 3-6. GroupOn property choices

Data type of field	GroupOn choices
Text	Each Value (default)Prefix Characters
Number, Currency	Each Value (default)Interval
Date/Time	Each Value (default)YearQtrMonthWeekDayHourMinute

When you use the GroupOn property to group on anything other than Each Value, you must realize that the records within the groupings will not be sorted. This means that in most cases you'll also need to include a second sorted copy of the field with GroupOn set to Each Value. This is what we did in the rptPhoneBook example.

Sorting or Grouping? When you add a field or expression to the Sorting and Grouping window, you may wonder what determines whether a field is a group or merely a sort. No single property determines this—rather, a field becomes a group field if you set either GroupHeader or GroupFooter (or both) to Yes. You can convert an existing group field to a sort field by setting both of these properties to No.

There are several section, report, and group properties that you can adjust to control whether a group is kept together on the same column or page and whether a new column or page is started before or after a group.

3.3.4 See Also

See the Solution in Recipe 3.14 for more details on controlling page and column breaks.