Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 20: Advanced Access Report Techniques

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The same report in Print Preview mode is shown in Figure 20.34. Notice that the report really

doesn’t make good use of the page width available to it. In fact, each record of this report is only

31 ⁄ 4 inches wide.

FIGURE 20.34

The report makes poor use of the available page width.

Setting a report to print as snaking columns is actually part of the print setup for the report, not an

attribute of the report itself. With the report in Design view, select the Page Setup tab in the Report

Design Tools ribbon area, then click on the Columns button to open the Page Setup dialog box

(shown in Figure 20.35) with the Columns tab selected. Change the Number of Columns prop-

erty to 2. As you change Number of Columns from 1 to 2 , the Column Layout area near the bot-

tom of the Layout tab becomes active, showing you that Access has selected the Across, Then

Down option to print items across the page first, and then down the page. Although this printing

direction is appropriate for mailing labels, it’s not what we want for our report. Select the Down,

Then Across option to direct Access to print the report as snaking columns (see Figure 20.35).

When working with snaking columns, make sure the proper Column Layout option is selected. If

you neglect to set the Column Layout to Down, Then Across, the snaking columns will be laid out

horizontally across the page. This common error can cause a lot of confusion because the report

won’t look as expected (see Figure 20.36). The reports shown in Figures 20.36 and 20.37 are the

same with the exception of the Column Layout setting.