Navigating Report View in Access

The report view is, in essence, a print preview and the buttons you see in Report view may be familiar to you from using the print preview feature in Access or other applications. The following diagram shows you the name of each button, and what it does.

You will find that you need to use the mouse to navigate Report view and you must use the mouse to view additional pages of the report (other than the one currently displayed). However, you can use the Page Up and Page Down Keys and the arrow keys to move around the current page of the report, doing the same job as the scroll bars.
Create mailing labels in the next lesson.

Just as with tables and queries, you can use several different views to change a report. When you create a report, you begin in Layout view, which is an ideal starting place for report builders. But depending on the task at hand, you may choose to switch to another view. You have four viewing options:

1. Layout View. Shows what the report will look like when printed, complete with the real data from the underlying table. You can use this view to format and rearrange the basic building blocks of the report.
2. Report View. Looks almost the same as Layout view, but does not let you make changes. If you double-click a report in the navigation pane, Access opens it in Report view so you can see the data it contains without accidentally changing its design. One common reason to use Report view is to copy portions of your report to the Clipboard, so you can paste them into other programs (like Microsoft Word).
3. Print Preview: Shows a live preview of your report, just like Layout view and Report view do. The difference is that the preview is paginated (divided into print pages), so you can figure out how many pages your printout needs and where the page breaks fall. You can also change print settings (like page orientation) and export the complete report.
4. Design View. Shows a template view where you can define the different sections of your report. It is not nearly as intuitive as Layout view, but it does give you complete, unrestrained flexibility to customize your report. Access experts often begin creating a report in Layout view and then add more exotic effects in Design view.

To select a series of rows, click in the margin on the left next to the first row you want to select, and then drag down to highlight the rows you want. Then, right-click the highlighted portion, and choose Copy to transfer it to the Clipboard, so it is ready for pasting into other Windows applications

Try your hand at creating a report with the Report Wizard and then previewing it in the report view.
Navigating Report View - Exercise