Exporting MSAccess reports gives poor results, suggestions?

[Lalbatros]

Access reports are very attractive but they cannot be exported in a convenient way. Therefore the only way to distribute an Access report is paper, as far as I could see.

I tried exporting them to Excel and I got an awful result.
I tried exporting to Word without more satisfaction.
Using snapshots files is not convenient because you cannot extract the data. Not more useful than paper!

The only way around I found is VBA/DAO programming in excel. But producing the structure of typical reports is a lot of work that I would like to avoid.

Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.

 

[Focht3]

Have you looked at Adobe Acrobat?

 

[plawrence]

Or Crystal?

Here's a thought:

Why do you want people to be able to fool with the numbers? The basic idea behind a report is for you the developer to organize the data in a way your readers can draw a conclusion. If you're only exporting the numbers to Excel so you can graph it, make the chart in your Access report. Any wordsmithing you do in Word you can do in Access. If people want the numbers just to have the numbers, give them a button to dump the raw dataset in a worksheet or text file or something--then they can format it the way they want.

Patrick

 

[HNGRR]

HARD WAY
Make a pivot table from the query, source of your report
EASY WAY
From inside your report (in ACCESS), select TOOLS, analize with WORD, from WORD select "select all", "Copy" and Close.
Open EXCEL and "Paste".
With minimun format you can arrange all that stuff

 

[paron]

I never responded because I didn't know any easier way than the HNGRR method.

Gad! No offense intended, HNGRR, but what a mess. Just another example of Microsoft's ambivalence toward Access. It competes with SQL Server, so it is a Red-Headed Stepchild in Redmond.

Why can't you click one button and publish your report? RHS!
Why can't you maximize one window without maximizing them all? RHS!
Why can't you apply special formatting in text fields? RHS!
Why do known bugs get labeled "By Design" and carried uncorrected from version to version to version of Access?Three guesses!

and on and on for YEARS!!

I suspect the best bet might be to output in XML -- free, open-source, human-readable -- and then use XSL to bat it into the shape you like. After that, almost any application (browsers, Office2003 beta, etc.) can make something of it.

Is it easy? Not the first time. But at least you are free of MS's shenanigans. You can use anyone's software, and never redo the work, unless you decide to do so.

Ron