Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 20: Advanced Access Report Techniques

747

Keep in mind that the measurement units you see in the Page Setup ribbon tab are determined by

the Windows international settings. For example, in Germany or Japan where the metric system is

used, the units of measure will be centimeters instead of inches. Also, you must allow for the mar-

gin widths set in the Margins gallery, accessed from the Page Setup ribbon tab (see Figure 20.40).

FIGURE 20.40

All report page settings must consider the margin widths.

For example, if you specify a Column Size Width of 3.5" and the left margin is set to 1", this means

the right edge of the column will actually fall 4^1 ⁄ 2 inches from the left physical edge of the paper, or

more than halfway across an 8^1 ⁄ 2 -x-11-inch sheet of paper printed in portrait mode. These settings

will not allow two columns, each 3^1 ⁄ 2 inches wide, to print on a standard letter-size sheet of paper.

In this case, you might consider reducing the left and right margins until the 3^1 ⁄ 2 -inch columns fit

properly. (Don’t worry about setting the margins too small to work with your printer. Unless

you’re working with a nonstandard printer, Windows is pretty smart about knowing the printable

area available with your printer and won’t allow you to set margins too small.)

Exploiting two-pass report processing

In Chapter 9, we mention that Access uses a two-pass approach when formatting and printing

reports. We’ll now explore what this capability means to you and how you can exploit both passes

in your applications.

The main advantage of two-pass reporting is that your reports can include expressions that rely on

information available anywhere in the report. For example, placing a control with the Sum() func-

tion in a header or footer means that Access will use the first pass to accumulate the data required

by the function, and then use the second pass to process the values in that section before printing

them.

Another obvious example is putting an unbound text box in the footer of a report containing the

following expression:

=“Page “ & [Page] & “ of “ & [Pages]