Print Report Behavior (Access 2002)

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I’ve run across a behavior in Access that I’d like to bypass. Can anyone help?

When I “preview” a report that I’ve created and then “Print” (Ctrl+P) from the preview window, all the procedures for the report fire again–needlessly in my view. The problem is that it takes about 2 minutes for the report to calculate and format, then another 2 minutes for it to print. Is it possible to just print what is in the preview window instead of capturing the data all over again?

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I don’t have your answer, but I do have a (single!) word of wisdom from experience:
While you’ll need to do certain things in the report, anything you can do in the query beforehand, do!
thx
Pat

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I don’t think it is possible to prevent the report from being opened anew when you print it from preview mode. You might provide a separate button or menu option or whatever to print the report directly, without previewing it first.

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I don’t think it is possible to prevent the report from being opened anew when you print it from preview mode. You might provide a separate button or menu option or whatever to print the report directly, without previewing it first.

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It might be needless from your point of view, but it’s the way the Access report generator is built. During the time you’re previewing a report, something could have changed in the data. Since Access is built to be multiuser and it has to reformat each page before it prints it anyhow, you can’t avoid that overhead. What you can do is change the report to not require so much recalculating and make sure you are testing the formatcount in any format event to avoid repeating the code every time the format event fires, which might help. Otherwise, move some of your calculations into the underlying query or base the report on temp tables, which don’t need to be repopulated when you go from preview to print.

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Thanks, Patricia, Hans and Charlotte, for your input.

I was aware of the reason Access recalculates before printing and agree with it, but some reports, like mine, have no need for that since I am reporting from data that has already been summarized and won’t be changing. I was just hoping there was a setting that could be changed.

Hans and Charlotte (along with a few others), you are the best. You’ve help me out many times in the Lounge. I know your hard work is appreciated by many.

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Thanks, Patricia, Hans and Charlotte, for your input.

I was aware of the reason Access recalculates before printing and agree with it, but some reports, like mine, have no need for that since I am reporting from data that has already been summarized and won’t be changing. I was just hoping there was a setting that could be changed.

Hans and Charlotte (along with a few others), you are the best. You’ve help me out many times in the Lounge. I know your hard work is appreciated by many.

Reply | Quote

It might be needless from your point of view, but it’s the way the Access report generator is built. During the time you’re previewing a report, something could have changed in the data. Since Access is built to be multiuser and it has to reformat each page before it prints it anyhow, you can’t avoid that overhead. What you can do is change the report to not require so much recalculating and make sure you are testing the formatcount in any format event to avoid repeating the code every time the format event fires, which might help. Otherwise, move some of your calculations into the underlying query or base the report on temp tables, which don’t need to be repopulated when you go from preview to print.

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