WYSIWYG Report Authoring
Access 12 has a variety of tools designed to make it both quicker and easier to author applications. The WYSIWYG report authoring view tools fit both bills. We saw a bit of them in the posts on Customizing the Issues Template and Starting from Scratch and can finally dive in deeper into the features this time. A knowledgeable Access developer will not be able to create reports that are significantly different than he could in Access 2003, but he'll be able to build those reports more quickly and without using VBA, ensuring that the reports look the same in a locked down environment as one with VBA turned on. New Access users will be able to author great looking reports for the first time.
What You See Is What You Get...
The core of the feature is as simple as 'you can look at your data while you're authoring the report'. This makes it much easier to visualize the report while you're authoring it, and eliminates switching views to gauge things like whether the data all fits or not. The quickest way to start a new report is to use the Quick Create button, which creates a new simple report with all the fields in the underlying table or query. In this case, I'll select a query from the nav pane and create a simple report (of course I could start from scratch as well - the only difference is that with Quick Creates I get all the columns and delete the ones I don't want, and starting from blank I add the ones I do want).
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Quick Create builds a flat report, with all the fields in the query, presented in the same order as the query:
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Since the report has all the available columns, the most likely thing I'll need to do first is to remove some. This is as simple as clicking and deleting (either with the Delete key or from the context menu).
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The next thing that I need to so is resize the columns to fit my data. This simple task presented 2 challenges in the old design view. First the other columns had no awareness of the fact that I was changing the width of their neighbor and so didn't get out of the way. I had to resize my column, then had to move all the other controls out of the way to make space for it. This wasn't hard, but was annoying and took time to get everything just right. The second issue was that I couldn't see the data while I was sizing the columns, so it is hard to tell exactly what the report will look like. In Access 12, I simply resize the thing in layout view and I'm done - I can see the data, and the other columns adjust as necessary.
Reordering columns is similarly easy. I simply select the column I want to move and drag it back and forth to drop in another location. Again the other columns resize as necessary.
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Grouping and Filtering
Grouping is as easy as right clicking and selecting "Group on ...". For more complex grouping, there is a new modeless grouping dialog that docks at the bottom of the screen and provides all the flexibility you'd expect.
Adding totals to reports is now very simple, and available on the ribbon. You simply select the column you'd like to total and click on the Totals button. For numeric data types, there are a variety of math functions available. In this case I've selected the text field for Issue, so can insert a count of Issues.
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This makes it easy to show how many issues there are for each person in the group.
To filter the data, all I need to do is select the data I'd like to filter for and right-click. In this case I've clicked on a text column in a row with the value "Active". Access then proposes a set of text filters for Active. Had a selected a number, I'd get appropriate filters for that; for a date I'd get date-aware filters (e.g. this week, last month, etc.).
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Changing the Presentation
Now that I've got the data I'd like to see, in the right order, I can start adjusting the formatting of the report so that people can understand it more easily. First, I'll add gridlines to separate the data rows by clicking on the "Gridlines" control on the ribbon:
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By selecting "Bottom", I get lines underneath each of the rows:
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My report is quite wide still, and will not print on regular paper in portrait orientation (this is easy to see from the dotted lines in the image below). It is simple for me to switch to landscape orientation from the ribbon as well, by going to the Page Setup contextual tab
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Now the dotted lines showing the page borders contain all the text, and I can easily see that my report will print one page wide.
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When I flipped to landscape mode, Access just changed the paper orientation and didn't move any controls, so as you can see in the image above, the date and time stamps are no longer right-aligned in the header, and I need to move them. I can do this in layout view as well, and simply click and drag them just as I would in the design view.
The ribbon provides controls for setting Control Margins (the internal spacing around the text inside the control):
And Control Padding (the spacing around the control itself). For this report, I've left the margins at the default "narrow" setting, but have increased padding to make the report a little easier to read:
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To make it even easier to parse the report, we can use alternating row colors to create a "green-bar" style report (I think I just dated myself).
The alternating row color tools are on the Formatting ribbon, and use the new color controls discussed in the last post.
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Finally, it is easy to add conditional formatting to a report, to ensure that the reader's eye is drawn to the right records. The user selects the Conditional formatting button on the ribbon, and sets up the formatting in a dialog.
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In the dialog, the user defines the condition, and selects what formatting to apply. In this case we'll mark old dates in red.
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The end result:
Starting From Blank
In the example above, we started from a "Quick Created" report, but we could have just as easily started from scratch. If we'd started from a blank report, we'd use the "Add Existing Fields" taskpane to drag the fields we want to add onto the report rather than deleting the ones we don't want. All the other functionality works just the same. Of course I can use "Add Existing" from a Quick Created report as well, either to build a join (this is shown in the Start from Scratch post, and we'll cover in more depth later) or to simply add back a field I've deleted. In this case, we'll add back the Comments field:
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I open the taskpane from the ribbon and then drag the field I want to the report - its new location is shown by the I-beam cursor.
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And the column is inserted (and of course the others are moved over to make space).
Design View
The existing Access design view is still present, and is still super useful for many tasks. We think the new layout view is faster for most common tasks (and much easier for new users), but we fully expect experienced Access users to switch back and forth between Layout and Design views frequently when authoring reports, and have worked hard to make that switch quick and seamless. Here's the report we've been building in the traditional Design View.
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Next Week
I'll be out next week at the Access Advisor conference. We'll have 5 folks from the Access team there showing Access 12 and teaching tips & tricks in depth. If you're attending, I look forward to meeting you there! My plan is to create a post next week about the new Layout View authoring tools for forms, and will hopefully be able to do that from Vegas.
