Report within a Report???

[xbigblue]

I have the pleasure of following another developer who cannot be contacted and who left no documentation. Access 2003, fairly simple tables layout. He consistenly has managed to place a "report within a report" in numerous reports. The application is invoicing; the "imbedded" report shows in design view as a one line scroll bar, left to right. When properties are turned on and I click on the scroll bar, the properties window just says "Report". The data source property is a table. The properties just do not seem to give me any information to solve the mystery of how it hangs together. Logic says the designer should have used a subreport, it's a natural to do so; the data are individual transactions associated with the invoice (special charges etc., there may be multiple lines, and it somehow works fine.) But it's definitely not a subreport.

But... I need to know how he did this. I am making enhancements and changes to this system. Can one "drag" an exisitng report into a new report under design? I don't see how this report works, or how he got this mystery report into the main report. There is no linkage (that I can find) between the table in the imbedded report and the primary table that drives the main report. There is little VBA behind the reports and what there is is pretty straightforward. The guy clearly did not understand database and table concepts and has written tons of near-duplicate reports just to deal with variations in conditions. I know this is not a brilliant explanation of the problem but I am realy baffled as to what I'm dealing with. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Regards,
Harry(xbigblue)

 

[xbigblue]

Addendum to my post about "report within report": Using object dependencies, I can find that the "imbedded" report shows up as an object that the main report is dependent upon. This is the first place I can actually see the true name of the depended upon object. Small progress.

Regards,
Harry(xbigblue)

 

[dhookom]

You can add a subreport/form control to the design view of a report. Once the control is on the main report, you can set its source object to a form, report, table, or query.

I would never do this but it is possible.

Duane MS Access MVP
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[xbigblue]

Duane,

Thanks, I'll have to try that and see if it looks like what I have now. I did try setting up a subreport with the wizard but the result looks nothing like the subject "horizontal scrollbar" that I have. The wizard's result had all the properties including the fact is was a subreport and it had the name of the included report. In other words, it looked logical and complete unlike the mystery method.

Regards,
Harry(xbigblue)

 

[xbigblue]

OK, I solved the mystery. I had said the report within a report was not a subreport; it IS a subreport. I found this same mystery in many places in his reports. Eventually, if one moves the mouse around enough in design mode, and moves the scroll arrow around, and keeps left clicking, the properties window does change to "subform/subreport" if you find the right spot to click and the details of linkage etc. are revealed. I still don't know how he got the "subreport" into place, but now I know what I needed to know and the mystery is no longer important. Thanks to Duane for the post.

Regards,
Harry(xbigblue)