i will be printing the access report. the report will not be printed a regular white paper. it will be printed on top of a paper with checkboxes and fields on it. i need those checkboxes and fields to be printed on according to the access data.
are there any libraries for access that make this easier? is there a feature that will help to print on specific coordinates?
please note that i will need to print on top of thousands of these forms and i will have to place an X in different places
You can set the position of controls using left, top and height properties and you can set the size of grid squares. You can also scan in the form and use it as a background graphic while you deisgn.
Download the Office 2007 PDF support add-in:
Once installed, you can print your reports to PDF. You're still in trial-and-error territory with the coordinates, but if you scan in your form as a PDF, you can overlay it with your PDF report output using simple image editing software and adjust your coordinates without wasting paper.
Scan each page of your destination form.
In a graphics program, convert the form to gray scale and lighten it so that it's not very dark. Crop the picture to remove the margins that you have defined in your Access report (e.g., if you have 1" all around, crop off 1" in all four sides).
Save it as Windows bitmap.
Open your report and doubleclick the square in the upper left corner to open the report's properties sheet.
On the format tab, find the Picture property, and insert the bitmap file you saved in step #3.
Test print the report to see if it prints exactly the same as the original form. When you have that done, you can start placing your controls to line up exactly with the picture. When you're done with that, you can remove the picture.