Access Reports

1. Access Reports

2. What is a Report • Reports provide many ways to organize, categorize, and summarize your data. • Reports range in complexity from a simple list—such as a project status report or a weekly sales report—to a detailed product catalog. • With reports you can also: • Prepare a customer invoice. • Produce a directory, such as an alphabetical list of employees with their contact information. • Present a data summary, such as sales grouped by region.

3. Reports • Reports are often used to present a big-picture overview, highlighting main facts and trends. • Grouping data and sorting data to make it more visibly meaningful are key benefits of reports. Reports let people take in the big picture at a glance. • For a sales report might group sales by region, by salesperson, and by quarter, showing subtotals as well as a grand total.

4. How Can You Create a Report? • There are four basic ways to create a report: • by using an AutoReport • by using a wizard • Design view • Blank report To create a report, you use data from one or more tables or queries. To use several tables, you would first create a query to retrieve data from those tables.

5. AutoReport • An AutoReport is the quickest way to create a report, but it gives you the least control over the report's structure and appearance. • An AutoReport automatically contains all the fields in its data source, whether table or query.

6. Report Wizard • The Report Wizard asks you questions and creates a report based on your answers. • This method is best when you want to be stepped through the process of creating a report. • The Report Wizard asks you which tables or queries you will base your report on, and which fields to use from those data sources. It asks whether you want to group data, and how you want to sort and summarize it. • After asking about the data, the Report Wizard asks about the appearance of your report: layout, orientation, and choice of six visual styles. Finally it asks you to give the report a title, and then it creates a report based on your answers.

7. Design View • Design view enables you to make changes ranging from the underlying data source to the color of the text. • Design view provides you with a toolbox from which you drag selected controls and arrange them on a grid. Controls can be bound to data from your database, displaying it directly, or they can be unbound, without a link to a data source. Descriptive text, dividing lines, a product logo, and other decorative controls are usually unbound.

8. Grouping and Headings • You may want to change the structure of your report—to group data by headings, for instance, or to separate parts of your report. • Or you may want a different look—more casual or compact, or with new colors or lettering. • Design view is where you add sections, group data, set report properties to control appearance and behavior, resize parts of a report, or change report formatting.

9. Report Structure • Reports have three types of sections: • Header sections The header sections contain information that appears either at the top of the report, or at the top of every page in the report. • The report header appears only once, at the beginning of the report. The topmost contents of the report (such as company name, address, and logo) belong in the report header. • The page header appears on every page of the report. Contents that you want to appear at the top of each page, such as column names, belong in the page header. • Detail The detail section contains most of the information in a report. For example, the detail section of an invoice lists all the individual items purchased and their costs. • Footer The page footer appears on every page. The report footer appears once, at the end of a report. The page footer section may contain the page number; the report footer section may contain the conclusion, such as a grand total.

10. Sorting and Grouping • You can group data in a report by selecting one or more values. • For example, selecting a date could group all the orders shipped on that date, as shown in the illustration. • You can select as many as 10 values for grouping in a report. • You can create or change data grouping in Design view by clicking the Sorting and Grouping button on the Report Design toolbar. You can also use the Report Wizard to group data when you create a report with the wizard.