Need help with Report to .pdf

[dwenin]

Each month, I create 700 different .pdf files based on 7 different Access Reports. I print my Reports to the Acrobat Distiller and manually extact each page to an individual file, which is then manually e-mailed. IT TAKES ME HOURS....I send 7 different pages to each employee. Is there any way to have Access export to individual .pdf files based on a field in the report? Any thoughs or help would be greatly appreciated!!!!

 

[jiqjaq]

Unless you have 3rd party software, you can't do this entirely within Access, as you've discovered. What you need to do is produce the reports with Docmd.OutputTo rather than with OpenReport.

You need to specify the output file type as Snapshot. If the version of Access you're running doesn't have acFormatSNP defined, you must use "Snapshot Format (*.snp)" ,including the quotes, as the output format type.

Put all the output files (which will have a .snp extension) for the reports into a single folder so you can easily find them. Run the distiller on the .snp and it should convert the entire report at once. (If you use the folder exclusively for this purpose, you can set up a proc to convert everything in the folder.)

It;s a good idea to TRIM() the reportname if it's coming from a table rather than being hardcoded in the OutputTo.
Snapshot is the only format that will work for this; I've tried them all.

 

[wemeier]

At the risk of sounding like a shill for a software company, we use a product called "The PDF and E-mail library" from ATTAC Consulting Group. As the name implies, it will automatically create a PDF document from an Access report. Then, it can automatically email that PDF document to the desired recipient.

You can write some VBA coding to walk through a list of users and successively create that user's part of the report using "The PDF and E-mail Library" to create the PDF document and email it.

We use this in our office for all of our production reports. We produce over 20 different reports for each of our 60 stores every week. We just kick off the job(s) and let them fly!

 

[VogonPoet]

I use the some software and its great.

Also, if you want to get tricky, you can merge the separate PDF files together so each recipient will only receive one PDF file with all the reports.

Also, each person receives a consistent packet of reports, you can create a template which has bookmarks for each report. After you create the PDF files, you can "merge" them into the template and produce a very professional looking package.

Michael

 

[dwenin]

Thanks for the help everyone! I really appreciate it.