Interesting Dilemma

[Tomin]

Hello Everybody,
I've got an interesting task that I am working on. I've taken my local phone book and put it into Access. What I'd like to do is use an access report to effectively replicate the format of the printed phone book. What I mean by this is having 3 columns, alphabetized on each page. I am unsure of how to set up the report so that I can have 3 columns of the same fields that would go the length of the page and then start at the top of the next column, and so forth. (not going alphabetically across all 3 columns one row at a time) If that's confusing, just pop open your local phone book and see what I mean. That's what I'm trying to replicate.

Secondly, I have a difficult task that relates to that report. Since I am dealing with a fixed width (column width) that the records of various lengths will fit into, I have a couple of needs. First, I need to see if the record will fit into a single row, if it does, great, put it in, if it doesn't, I want to strip vowels from the address and then see if it fits, if not then put the vowels back in and put it on two lines (using the same checking method to see if it would fit on 2 lines, and if not going to 3 lines, etc.)

Does any of this make sense? It's been running my brain overtime trying to come up with a solution for this. I know there's a bunch of smart people out there, and if you've read this, hopefully you're one of them. I appreciate any thoughts or suggestions of where I may find my solutions.
Thanks in advance.

Tomin
cedie@hotmail.com

 

[Circle]

In the report you can go to the page set up from the design view of the report and click on columns set up the width of columns you want and how many it will then take the fields and put them in column form.(make sure that your detail has the fields listed one under another) As for the second question of having all of the info show up, go to the properties of the specific field and in the can grow section choose yes, what that will do is let all of the info go to more than one line. I do not know how to take letters out and put them back in. The can grow format of the field should work. If you want I can send you the test data base I created to see if this would work. Just e-mail me and let me know

 

[Tomin]

Thanks,
Yeah I found the columns settings finally, and I did play around with the can grow setting a bit too, however I have a bit of a problem with the can grow feature... when it grows, sometimes it overlaps the other fields (address) that's on the second line. Is there a way to move the field if the previous one does grow?
I'm also onto another difficult dilemma, I've got some records in the database that do not have an address, so I am trying to figure out how to not display that field for that particular record if it is null. I've tried using a subreport method with the address is a header of it's own, and using HasData to set the visible value for that field. But I think it only checks it once, not on each record. I end up with blank spaces all over the page, and that's what I'm trying to eliminate. Any thoughts?

Thanks

Tomin