OutputTo: Output the contents of a form or a report without the footer

[Fred Chamberlin]

I have set up for users to output various forms and reports to either Excel or to PDF format. In both cases, I would like the footer to not be included in the output. The footer area includes the button to output the form or report. Any suggestions?

[NeoPa]

Design your report to include only what you want printed/exported.

[Fred Chamberlin]

The footer of the report has buttons to Print, Export and Close. I want to keep them, but I do not want them to Export (or Print) if possible.

[NeoPa]

That's one of the 'benefits' of the newer versions (2007+) - People get confused if you provide fundamentally illogical features. Interactive features on a report, for example, but also the ability to print forms as if they were reports.

Fundamentally, when you print or export an object it goes out as designed. If you consider a report as something that is printed/exported formatted, and a form as something with which you interact and control your project, you are unlikely to struggle with this concept.

It seems MS don't see it that way, but then they're not around when people go past the very basics into the almost unavoidable problems beyond.

In fairness, I don't believe there is a way to avoid that except maybe by starting with the basic, printable, version and adding the extra bells and whistles in VBA if you don't want to print or export it. Personally, I'd keep it simple.

[TheSmileyCoder]

Hi Fred

Alot of objects in Access (including atleast the form/report header/footer and textboxes, I haven't really checked further) have a property called "Display When" which can be set to either "Always", "Screen Only", or "Print Only". If you select your footer and set the "Display When" to screen only that should accomplish what you want.

And NeoPa I beg to differ. I can easily think of forms designed in such a way that they could be used as reports. I can also imagine you might want information (tooltip/help) displayed on screen, that you dont want printed.

You could even have red arrows/labels on a report which will show in print preview, but not on the print. Could be information saying "Please Remember to check that XXX is still valid" (Assuming this is some logic that cannot be coded but requires human mind. If it can be coded, it should be.)

The only real area where I tend to agree is that you should not use click events on reports, whether they be tied to a button or a label. If you need thta I would recommend using a custom commandbar/toolbar/rightclick bar (or ribbon for ac2007/2010)

EDIT: Oh, and the Display When property is around in Ac2003 at least. Don't know about earlier versions.

[Fred Chamberlin]

Thank you! Setting the display property on the report footer to Screen Only accomplishes what I want.

[NeoPa]

I won't say it can never be a benefit Smiley, simply that, on the KISS principle, I recommend avoiding it where possible. Even now you've reminded me of this property (which can clearly be of use in some situations), I would still recommend to use it as little as possible. It's a complication. Someone is likely to waste man-hours later trying to understand why a printed version is different from a version seen on screen.

So, good call for providing the solution (and frankly, if I'd managed to remember it I would have suggested it myself), but I still recommend as little use of it as one can.