Microsoft Access Form and Report

Form and Report

Carolina Critters is planning to photograph all aspects of its manufacturing process. You will need to research digital cameras for the company's president. Begin this task by searching the Internet for office supply vendors that see digital cameras priced between $200 and $700.

Create a new table and form to enter the name of the camera manufacturer, the name/model of the camera, the store that sells the camera and an image of the camera.

Using the form, enter data for at least four manufacturers and twelve cameras. Add your full name to the form header. Name the table and the form anything you wish. You are using the form to enter data because it is easier than entering the data in a table. You are also showing your skill at creating a custom form. Here is an example of a custom that might be suitable for the Carolina Critters Company.

The above example shows, custom, font style, font color, back color of fields and background image of form. (the Reviews fields is missing but be sure to include it in your form. here is another example:

Just to be clear, the images inserted are each in its own record. You can only see one record at a time. The image of the camera is seen int he bottom left corner and will chnage whne the form is moved to the next record.

How it's done:

When creating your table, set the appropriate field sizes and data types. Add a field for image, and set the data type to attachment. Also add a Reviews field, and set that data type to Long Textwhich is called Memo in earlier versions. These two field types, attachement and long text/memo, only show in Forms. Long Text or Memo, is used for large amounts of data and is handled differently and more efficiently than using the regular Text data type, and setting the size at 100 or 200! Do not use regular text with large field sizes. The memo or long text can hold unlimited amounts of data.

In Table View, click the paperclip icon in the new attachment field. A dialog box will appear as shown below. And add or attach, the image or images that you downloaded from the web. You won't see the images until the form is created.

You can also enter text into the Long Text/Memo field while in Table View, but it's best to wait until the form is created. You can also insert the images in the form after the form is created.

You can create the form by choosing Blank Form as the form type. This way there won't be any fields to delete or re-arrange. You will add them one by one to the blank form canvas. When your blank form appears on the screen, make sure to go to Design View by using the same tool, in the same location you have been using for Design View for tables and Queries.

Add Fields by clicking the Add Existing Fields tool on the ribbon to activate the Field List panel. The panel will appear on the right side of the screen. You can now simply drag and drop the fields onto the blank canvas.

See below an quick example with just three fields dragged from the Field List into the form canvas:

Below is the form in Form View. You can see the same paperclip tool for adding images here as well.

Back in Design View:

After adding the fields and moving them around, you can right-click the fields to set 

• Special Effects - raised, shadowed etc.
• Background and foreground color or image
  
• Sizes and Alignment

   

To add a background, click the Format tab on the To

ol Ribbon and choose Background. If a background image is smaller than the monitor size (the form size), it will tile. This might not be a good thing. It depends on the image you use. Search the web for a suitable image.

You can use the Aa tool (label tool) to add text to any part of the form such as a header or footer.

Things to make designing easier:

Use the lasso to select groups of objects. Just click and hold the mouse down in a blank area and drag to surround the desired objects. They will be selected as a group for moving or formatting.

Right-click a group of selected fields, the labels and the controls, and choose alignment (right, left, top or bottom) to straighten them up. Or choose size (tallest, shortest etc.) to size them equally.

Remember the controls have two pieces. The control itself and its label. They usually move together and are deleted together, but you can click the top left corner of the label or control to act on it independently.

After selecting an object (a field, or the header section, or the entire form), activate the Property Sheet, (on the tool ribbon over to the right), and inspect the properties in the sheet that appeared on the right. Here you can set such things as font style, font color, back color etc. Of particular importance, see the Display as property for the image field. Try out the 3 choices (Clip, Stretch, Zoom).

Save your work.

A file with a ton of examples of forms and reports is provided on the opening page. You wil see that forms can be made to look a lot like tables but we are usually trying to get away from rows and columns. However, seeing more than one record at a time has its advantages as will see later on.

The stuffed animal example in the forms list is close to the design we are going for this week.

Part 2 of the assignment is to design a report that displays the manufacturers, name/model of the cameras, stores, prices and image of cameras.

Group the data by manufacturer and sort by price in ascending order.

On the Page Footer of the report, add your full name as a label.

You  can see an an example below of the completed report to imitate, but make it your own.

Name the report anything you wish and save it.

Submit the database with the table, the form and the report using the Assignment Drop-Box tool.

How it's done

From the Tool Ribbobn, select Create tab, Report Wizard.

Choose your table and the fields you desire.

Select a field on which to group

Select a field on which to sort. (You can explore the Summary options in this same dialog box)

Tht's it. Close Print Preview on the far right and return to Design View. You can size fields and images etc. for a better presentation.

Submit the database with the Table, Form and Report for grading.