Need some advice on Report Generating

[Trighosts]

Current situation is:
I am generating a report by parsing through a record set and populating an Excel 2000 spreadsheet and invoking the print.
Reasons and benefits are as follows:
1. The base document is easy to edit in Excel
2. The document is in Landscape format and is slightly wider than the page. In Excel you can format the print area so that it is stretched in the appropriate direction to make the document look proportional.
3. I can manipulate the column output on the fly in VB

Cons are:
1. Have to generate new document for each page.
2. It is difficult to preview the entire document at once (because of #1)
3. I am not sure about the distribution of the Excel portion of the code. (Not a huge concern on this project because all the system I am installing on have Excel. However, next project I might not be so lucky)

I have looked at Datareports (I use one for a different report). But I am very frustrated with the editing functions of Datareports in VB. It seems that Datareports are very limited in terms of formatting the output (for example sizing the actual print area does not seem to be an option).

Crystal reports may work for me I understand that it is packaged with VB6 but I am not sure where to go for information on how to implement Crystal. And like Excel I am not sure about re-distribution. (I don’t have CR on the systems I am installing to)

What am looking for is a better solution / direction or more information / suggestions / sample code to solve the report issues. I would like to generate a Preview of the report. I would also like the report to be as Excel like as possible. The current project “works” I just want to make it work better without spending extreme amounts of time editing the document for mediocre results. (I don’t mind the training time) I also do not have a large budget to spend on outside software I need to work within VB6 and Office 2000

TIA
Tom

 

[jray2003]

MSDN has some really good examples on how to you Word. I decided to go this route and glad I did. I have complete control over the out put and once I learned just a few commands, it is working out find. I would be more then glad to share this with you if you give me you email address.

Jim

 

[johnwm]

jray2003,

I notice you've posted a lot of questions, and got a lot of answers. Although you've been pointed to faq222-2244 on a few occassions, you don't seem to have read it yet.

Paragraph 12 deals with private emails, and explains why all questions and answers should be posted in the forum.

Paragraph 15 deals with showing appreciation for answers that you find helpful/expert. Although by your own admission you've found much here to be helpful/expert, you have yet to mark any posts as such

________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

'People who live in windowed environments shouldn't cast pointers.'

 

[MichaelRed]

In creating a report using Word, It would seem that a minor variation on the mail merge theme would work well. I haven't done reporting using this, but I have created some 'elaborate' mail merge schemes and they appear to be easily generated and can/do produce multi-page documents pretty quickly.

Another option might be to use MS. Access as the companion product. It has good reporting capabilities and is available to many/most MS shops as it is bundled with the Office suite.



MichaelRed
m.red@att.net

Searching for employment in all the wrong places