Exploring Reports

You can display the information recorded in your tables in nicely formatted, easily accessible reports, either on your computer screen or on paper. A report can include items of information selected from multiple tables and queries, values calculated from information in the database, and formatting elements such as headers, footers, titles, and headings.

You can look at reports in four views:

• Design View, in which you can manipulate the design of a report in the same way that you manipulate a form.

• Report View, where you can scroll through the information in the report without the page breaks inserted when it is printed.

• Print Preview, in which you see your report exactly as it will look when printed.

• Layout View, which displays the data in the report (similar to Print Preview) but enables you to edit the layout.

In this exercise, you will preview a report as it will appear when printed.

1.	In the Navigation Pane, under Reports, right-click Customer Labels, and then click Print Preview. The Customer Labels report opens.
2.	Click the preview document to display a larger view of it. [View full size image] Tip If the report is too small to read in Print Preview, you can adjust the zoom level by clicking the Zoom In button or dragging the Zoom slider that appears in the lower-right corner of the Print Preview window. This report prints customer names and addresses in a mailing label format. You are looking at it in a view that is much like Print Preview in other Office programs. Tip Access provides a wizard that can help you create a mailing label report. You can also use the Customers table as a source document for the Word 2007 mail merge tool to create labels like these.
3.	In the Navigation Pane, right-click the Sales by Category report, and then click Print Preview.
4.	Scroll through a few pages of the multi-page report by clicking the navigation buttons at the bottom of the window.
5.	On the View toolbar, click the Design View button. Design View [View full size image] Access displays the report in Design view. In this view, the report looks similar to a form. The techniques you use to create forms can also be used to create reports.