Part I: Access Building Blocks
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Tip
You can always check your result by clicking the Print Preview button on the toolbar and zooming in on the
Page Footer section to check the page number.
Sizing a text-box control or label control
You select a control by clicking it. Depending on the size of the control, from three to seven sizing
handles appear — one on each corner except the upper-left corner and one on each side. Moving
the mouse pointer over one of the sizing handles changes the mouse pointer to a double-headed
arrow. When the pointer changes, click the control and drag it to the size you want. Notice that, as
you drag, an outline appears indicating the size the label control will be when you release the
mouse button.If you double-click any of the sizing handles, Access resizes a control to best fit for text in the con-
trol. This feature is especially handy if you increase the font size and then notice that the text no
longer fits the control.Note that, for label controls, the best-fit sizing resizes both vertically and horizontally, although text
controls resize only vertically. The reason for this difference is that in Report Design mode, Access
doesn’t know how much of a field’s data you want to display. Later on, the field’s name and con-
tents might be radically different. Sometimes label controls are not resized correctly, however, and
have to be adjusted manually.Tip
You can also choose Arrange ➪ Size/Space ➪ To Fit to change the size of the label control text automatically.
Before continuing, you should check how the report is progressing. You should also save the
report frequently as you make changes to it. You could send a single page to the printer, but it’s
probably easier to view the report in Print Preview. Right-click the report’s title bar, and select
Print Preview from the shortcut menu. Figure 9.31 shows a print preview of the report’s current
appearance. The page header information is at the very top of the page, and the first product
record appears below the header.As you move the mouse over the print preview, the cursor changes to a magnifying glass. Click any
portion of the view to zoom in so that can closely examine the report’s layout. Only one record per
page appears on the report because of the vertical layout. In the next section, you move the con-
trols around and create a more horizontal layout.Deleting and cutting attached labels from text controls
To create the report shown in Figure 9.31, you must move the text-box labels from the Detail sec-
tion to the Page Header section. Once moved, these controls appear as headings above each col-
umn of data and are repeated on each page of the report.