Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 20: Advanced Access Report Techniques

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Adding a blank line every n records

Detail sections chock-full of dozens or hundreds of records can be difficult to read. It’s easy to lose

your place when reading across columns of figures and when the rows are crowded together on the

page. Wouldn’t it be nice to insert a blank row every fourth or fifth record in a Detail section? It’s

much easier to read a single row of data in a report (rptGapsEvery5th in Chapter20.accdb)

where the records have been separated by white space every fifth record (see Figure 20.25).

FIGURE 20.25

Using white space to break up tabular data can make it easier to read.

Access provides no way to insert a blank row in the middle of a Detail section. You can, however,

trick Access into inserting white space in the Detail section now and then with a little bit of pro-

gramming and a couple of hidden controls.

Figure 20.26 reveals the trick behind the arrangement you see in Figure 20.25. An empty,

unbound text box named txtSpacer is placed below the fields containing data in the Detail sec-

tion. To the left of txtSpacer is another unbound text box named txtCounter.