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Creating and Editing Reports

Reports are the best way to put information from your database onto paper. In a report, you can choose how to display your data, including which information to include (which tables and fields); where to print each field on the page; text fonts, font sizes, and spacing; and printing lines, boxes, and pictures.

Reports can include information from different tables - for instance, you can display the customer information, followed by all the items that the customer has bought from all orders. The Report Wizard simplifies creating reports that list, summarize, and total your data. You can also use calculations in reports to create totals, subtotals, and other results. You can create invoices, packing slips, student rosters, and all kinds of other reports. Thanks to the trusty Label Wizard, reports are also the best way to create mailing labels from addresses in your database.

This tutorial explains how to create and modify reports so they're ready to print.

In this tutorial:

  1. What are Forms and Reports
  2. Creating Reports Automatically
  3. Running the Report Wizard
  4. Creating Simple Reports
  5. Editing Reports in Design View
  6. Adding page headers, footers, and numbers
  7. Adding sections that group your records
  8. Sorting the records in your report
  9. Calculating group subtotals and report totals
  10. Formatting Tips and Tricks
  11. Copying Forms to Reports
  12. Adding and Formatting Subreports
  13. Displaying Empty or Long Fields
  14. Creating Mailing Labels