VAST Accounting™

 Send a report to Word or Excel

One of the handiest features in Access is the OfficeLinks feature. This toolbar icon (marked by a blue W) gives you the option of sending a report, form, table, or query to Word or Excel. You can use this feature to send a report to a format that can easily be e-mailed to someone who doesn't have access to the database. If you don't see the icon, select Tools | OfficeLinks.

There are some things to be aware of before sending a report to Word or Excel.

  • In Word, Access-specific controls such as check boxes, lines, and rectangles do not convert.
  • Even if the width of a control looks correct in Print Preview in Access, Word may not agree. You may have to go back to the report and widen the control in question and then scoot all the other controls one way or another.
  • If you have groups in your report, Excel will turn on the Subtotal tool, setting up a subtotal for each group.
  • Excel will use the actual field name as the header label, based on the underlying text box in the Detail section of the report.
And here's a workaround if you have a check box that's not displaying. Substitute the following ControlSource for a text box control:

=Iif([MyYesNoField]=True,"X","")

Word won't have any problem displaying a plain ol' letter X. To make it stand out, make it bold. By using the Immediate If function, you can do a simple test. If the value of your underlying field is True (or Yes), it prints the X; otherwise it prints nothing.

VAST Accounting seems to be running slowly

If it seems like VAST is running slowly, the cause of the problem may be your anti-virus software.  Anti-virus software typically scans a file each time it is accessed.  This can drastically reduce performance of an Access database.

To correct this problem, simply open the options screen in your anti-virus software and add the following file types to the "Exclusions" list.

 

  • *.MDE
  • *.MDB
  • *.LDB

This will prevent scanning of these types of files.  You must do this at both the workstations and on the server.