Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 20: Advanced Access Report Techniques .......................................................................

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FIGURE 20.1

Alphabetical grouping is easy!

Typically, data is grouped on the entire contents of a field or combination of fields. Simple group-

ing on the CompanyName field means that all records for Bottom Dollar Markets appear together

as a group and all the records for Ernst Handel appear together as another group. You can, how-

ever, override the default and group based on prefix characters by changing the Group On property

in the Group, Sort, and Total dialog box.

Notice the More button in the CompanyName sorting bar in Figure 20.1. Clicking the More button

reveals the sorting details you want to apply to the CompanyName field (see Figure 20.2). By

default, text fields such as CompanyName are sorted alphabetically by the field’s entire contents.

You can, however, change this behavior to alter how Access applies grouping to the field’s data (see

Figure 20.3).

FIGURE 20.2

Many options are available to you for Grouping and Sorting

FIGURE 20.3

Modifying a text-base grouping

When you select by first character, the GroupInterval property tells Access how many charac-

ters to consider when grouping on prefix characters. In this case, the grouping interval is set to 1 ,

meaning, “Consider only the first character when grouping.” You could choose to group by the first

character, the first two characters, or any number of characters in the field, depending on your

requirements.