2 challenges - page borders / group, yes, but with label?

Glad you found the option you needed in the wizard.

Further guidance::
If you open the report in design mode, you can get the sorting and grouping
dialog by choosing View: Sorting and Grouping from the Menu.


"StargateFan" wrote in message
...
Got it! Wow, I was just not getting it. I was going around in
circles so then decided to re-build the report from scratch. That's
where I finally found the sorting and grouping done by the first
letter. There are so many options in the report wizard it's tough for
a newbie to know what to pick, but I was forewarned this time on what
to look for g. I see that the elements are identical in both
reports it's just that in my earlier one, somewhere I must be missing
something vital. As I work through fine-tuning this report down to
size, I might figure out where I went wrong before.

Thanks. Your post helped me to find the answer by working through
everything. Appreciate it. D

***********************************************
On Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:26:21 -0500, John Spencer
wrote:

You should be grouping on the expression your were given and not on the
field.

ALthough you can group on the field.

In the sorting and grouping dialog,
Group on: Prefix Characters
Group Interval: 1

That will group on the first character of the group.

For detailed help, open the Sorting and Grouping dialog, and put the
cursor in
the Group On choice list, and press the F1 key.

StargateFan wrote:

On Mon, 02 Jan 2006 09:55:29 -0500, StargateFan
wrote:

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 07:34:10 -0800, "Mike Revis"
mikeathazmatexpress.com wrote:

I think I see what you are trying to do.

[snip]

Use sorting and grouping to make a LastName header and put a textbox
with
=Left([LastName], 1) in the LastName header section. This will give
you your
Letter Heading for each section.

[snip]

I hope it's okay but starting a new thread. I thought this whole
grouping and header thing was working, but it's not. When I used it
during the initial few records I input, the records started with a
different letter of the alphabet so the header thing seemed to work.
To my dismay today upon entering many more records, I have at last
count for example, 25 records showing up under 14 "B" headers with
each grouping underneath containing 1 to 4 entries. That's because I
just happened to enter info about bus routes so first field is the
same in many, with additional bus station info/bus direction and bus
stop phone code being what changed which shows up in 2 other fields.
Otherwise, with a slightly different format, each of those 25 records
would have a header all its own making for 25 "B" headers!!!! g
Needless to say, this is _not_ good.

Is there a way to get a printout that groups _all_ entries starting
with same letter? So that all A entries fall under a group header of
"A", same for B, C and so forth down the alphabet? As I mentioned in
the original thread, this was so very easy to do in old DOS days over
15 years ago in dBase III+ so know that the much more powerful A2K
should have a way to do this, too. The archives have revealed only
issues regarding grouping, unfortunately with nothing coming up for
this type of thing and reporting.

Thank you! D

On Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:49:23 -0500, "StargateFanFromWork"
wrote:

I need to have a 8 1/2x11" sheet of paper accommodate several, say, +/- 3in
x 4in "reports". I was given the great advice of setting a page to print
x-number of reports per page, or whatever, but this hasn't really worked
out. Difficult to know what to start with to get the target dimensions in
the finished "reports" g.

I hit upon building a custom "label" that I could use instead of the
standard page sizes and this has worked really well. But I'm stuck with 2
things - no lines as cutting guides and how to group by alphabet?

1) Re the cutting guides - is there a way to put borders around each label
similar to what Word can do so that each "label" has a border? Yes, I could
position everything so that I'd just cut up the sheet into 8ths or whatever,
but it would be so much easier to have a precisely-defined, unchanging size
via borders. I won't always have a paper cutter handy g.

Got it!! This took quite some doing.

I created a new report using the index card "label" available from
Avery. After creation, I set it to portrait.

To get a "page border", hunted around again in the archives. This is
the code that goes in the page event (I believe it's called), in the
"On Page" option in properties:

************************************************** **********
Private Sub Report_Page()
Me.DrawStyle = 0 ' 0 = (Solid Line) thru 6 = (invisible line)
' ALL NUMBERS ARE PIXELS...
Me.DrawWidth = 1 ' set the thickness of the line
' Draw a box (the border!) around the page.
Me.Line (0, 0)-(Me.ScaleWidth, Me.ScaleHeight), , B

End Sub
************************************************** **********

2) Is there a way to group by "A", "B", etc.? I remember doing that way
back when in dbase III+ in the late 80s. I'd get a letter "A" then a
paragraph break and then all the "A" entries. Another paragraph break would
follow (or a page break, as per the developer's choice) and the letter "B"
came after followed by the "B" entries. Etc.

Can these 2 things be done in A2K? I googled over the weekend a few times
and hunted for info in the help file but, this time, I guess I'm not asking
for the right thing as nothing pertinent came up that was of help.

I learned how to do this, too!!! g And I've figured out how to do
it even _after_ a report is created phew! vbg

I found out how A2K does this when I re-created the report, this time
grouping by the "last name" field and setting it to group by the first
letter during the wizard (it was something like that during the wizard
run).

After the fact: I was able to implement same idea to other reports by
going to the sorting/grouping of the report and choosing to group by
the "lastname" field once again. The trick was to choose "Prefix
Characters" in the "Group On" option in the "Group Properties" in the
sorting/grouping box. I'd not done that before so it didn't work
properly until I chose the right option.

Thanks for the great help, and I had quite a bit of it, and thanks to
the archives for the "page border" code! g

Cheers. D

On Tue, 3 Jan 2006 07:58:35 -0500, "John Spencer"
wrote:

Glad you found the option you needed in the wizard.

g

Further guidance::
If you open the report in design mode, you can get the sorting and grouping
dialog by choosing View: Sorting and Grouping from the Menu.

That was the funny thing, I did all of that. I had the right text box
in the "last name header" and all and sorting/grouping was on the
lastname field. What was wrong was so simple. I changed the "Group
On" option under the "Group Properties" from "Each Value" to "Prefix
Characters"! Like geez! It was that simple. But as they say, all's
well that ends well.

Thanks! D

"StargateFan" wrote in message
.. .
Got it! Wow, I was just not getting it. I was going around in
circles so then decided to re-build the report from scratch. That's
where I finally found the sorting and grouping done by the first
letter. There are so many options in the report wizard it's tough for
a newbie to know what to pick, but I was forewarned this time on what
to look for g. I see that the elements are identical in both
reports it's just that in my earlier one, somewhere I must be missing
something vital. As I work through fine-tuning this report down to
size, I might figure out where I went wrong before.

Thanks. Your post helped me to find the answer by working through
everything. Appreciate it. D

***********************************************
On Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:26:21 -0500, John Spencer
wrote:

You should be grouping on the expression your were given and not on the
field.

ALthough you can group on the field.

In the sorting and grouping dialog,
Group on: Prefix Characters
Group Interval: 1

That will group on the first character of the group.

For detailed help, open the Sorting and Grouping dialog, and put the
cursor in
the Group On choice list, and press the F1 key.

StargateFan wrote:

On Mon, 02 Jan 2006 09:55:29 -0500, StargateFan
wrote:

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 07:34:10 -0800, "Mike Revis"
mikeathazmatexpress.com wrote:

I think I see what you are trying to do.

[snip]

Use sorting and grouping to make a LastName header and put a textbox
with
=Left([LastName], 1) in the LastName header section. This will give
you your
Letter Heading for each section.

[snip]

I hope it's okay but starting a new thread. I thought this whole
grouping and header thing was working, but it's not. When I used it
during the initial few records I input, the records started with a
different letter of the alphabet so the header thing seemed to work.
To my dismay today upon entering many more records, I have at last
count for example, 25 records showing up under 14 "B" headers with
each grouping underneath containing 1 to 4 entries. That's because I
just happened to enter info about bus routes so first field is the
same in many, with additional bus station info/bus direction and bus
stop phone code being what changed which shows up in 2 other fields.
Otherwise, with a slightly different format, each of those 25 records
would have a header all its own making for 25 "B" headers!!!! g
Needless to say, this is _not_ good.

Is there a way to get a printout that groups _all_ entries starting
with same letter? So that all A entries fall under a group header of
"A", same for B, C and so forth down the alphabet? As I mentioned in
the original thread, this was so very easy to do in old DOS days over
15 years ago in dBase III+ so know that the much more powerful A2K
should have a way to do this, too. The archives have revealed only
issues regarding grouping, unfortunately with nothing coming up for
this type of thing and reporting.

Thank you! D

On Tue, 03 Jan 2006 08:19:59 -0500, StargateFan
wrote:

On Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:49:23 -0500, "StargateFanFromWork"
wrote:

I need to have a 8 1/2x11" sheet of paper accommodate several, say, +/- 3in
x 4in "reports". I was given the great advice of setting a page to print
x-number of reports per page, or whatever, but this hasn't really worked
out. Difficult to know what to start with to get the target dimensions in
the finished "reports" g.

I hit upon building a custom "label" that I could use instead of the
standard page sizes and this has worked really well. But I'm stuck with 2
things - no lines as cutting guides and how to group by alphabet?

1) Re the cutting guides - is there a way to put borders around each label
similar to what Word can do so that each "label" has a border? Yes, I could
position everything so that I'd just cut up the sheet into 8ths or whatever,
but it would be so much easier to have a precisely-defined, unchanging size
via borders. I won't always have a paper cutter handy g.

Got it!! This took quite some doing.

I created a new report using the index card "label" available from
Avery. After creation, I set it to portrait.

To get a "page border", hunted around again in the archives. This is
the code that goes in the page event (I believe it's called), in the
"On Page" option in properties:

************************************************* ***********
Private Sub Report_Page()
Me.DrawStyle = 0 ' 0 = (Solid Line) thru 6 = (invisible line)
' ALL NUMBERS ARE PIXELS...
Me.DrawWidth = 1 ' set the thickness of the line
' Draw a box (the border!) around the page.
Me.Line (0, 0)-(Me.ScaleWidth, Me.ScaleHeight), , B

End Sub
************************************************* ***********

2) Is there a way to group by "A", "B", etc.? I remember doing that way
back when in dbase III+ in the late 80s. I'd get a letter "A" then a
paragraph break and then all the "A" entries. Another paragraph break would
follow (or a page break, as per the developer's choice) and the letter "B"
came after followed by the "B" entries. Etc.

Can these 2 things be done in A2K? I googled over the weekend a few times
and hunted for info in the help file but, this time, I guess I'm not asking
for the right thing as nothing pertinent came up that was of help.

I learned how to do this, too!!! g And I've figured out how to do
it even _after_ a report is created phew! vbg

I found out how A2K does this when I re-created the report, this time
grouping by the "last name" field and setting it to group by the first
letter during the wizard (it was something like that during the wizard
run).

After the fact: I was able to implement same idea to other reports by
going to the sorting/grouping of the report and choosing to group by
the "lastname" field once again. The trick was to choose "Prefix
Characters" in the "Group On" option in the "Group Properties" in the
sorting/grouping box. I'd not done that before so it didn't work
properly until I chose the right option.

Thanks for the great help, and I had quite a bit of it, and thanks to
the archives for the "page border" code! g

Cheers. D

Darn, forgot to mention for other real newbies like me that if you do
this after the fact, one just has to add in the header a text box with
the following:

=Left$([LastName],1)

Mine is coloured green with the parentheses, like this:
="[ - " & Left$([LastName],1) & " - ]"


*************
Also, one last thing, the fields are all concatenated in my report so
the canshrink didn't work properly until I added Trim(). So the
"lastname" field in the report looks like this:

=Trim([LastName] & " " & [FirstName])

That was something that took a long time to fix, too. But once you
know, you're set for life for this type of thing.

Have a good day, everyone! D