MS Access 2003 How to use expandable table in Report

You could try building your "grid" with your text boxes and altering the border properties instead of using boxes for your "Cells"

Leigh

Using separate horizontal and vertical lines, rather than boxes, it is possible to adjust the height of the vertical lines at run-time, by reference to the section height.  However this only works if your 'boxes' occupy the full height of a section, and is tedious to do.  

An alternative is to use multiple subreports, with borders, but here you run the risk of getting several boxes alongside each other with different heights.

The route I usually take is to abandon vertical rulings, other than in the fixed-height header, and rely on horizontal ruling only, which will automatically move to accommodate the longest entry.

As Leigh said: Use Textboxes, and set the CanGrow/CanShrink properties to Yes. I see no reason to use lines and boxes, unless I'm missing something here.

Folks,
Thanks for the quick response. Attached is screen shot. After looking at the screenshot, are you suggesting that I would need to create 15 separate textboxes to accomdate each "can grow" text field? Given the layout, if the last year columns had a great deal of data would the adjacent "2 years ago" column span as well? (this would be fine BTW).
This is all on a report so not certain if I want to deal with several subreports. And landscape is out of the question because the form must be portrait orientation.
Thoughts?
Thanks again in advance for looking at this.

My advice would be to ditch the vertical lines and simply use horizontal lines between the rows of fields.

Bellone;

<it is possible to adjust the height of the vertical lines at run-time, by reference to the section height.>

I never had any real luck with this.

Because if you put a message box on the format event of the detail section to check the Height, (Msgbox me.Section(0).Height) they will all be the same, regardless of ho much the control "grows".

It is my understanding that the textbox "Grow" is a "Graphical" feature.

(or did I miss something?)

Jeff

Jeff - It's a while since I did it, but the general concept was that the deepest control in the section would determine the section height, and because the report was effectively run twice to sort out things like the page numbering, one was able to make the height of the vertical lines the same as the ultimate section height.

It was cribbed from one of the well-known gurus - I'll see if I can turn up chapter and verse.

Anthony

Here we are: http://www.lebans.com/PrintLines.htm

Yes, I am familiar with that link.
I though you were just talking about doing something like this:
Me.Line.Height=me.Section(0).Height
...which does not work quite the way one might expect.

With either system it just (to me at leaset) seems like a boat-load of code to do something that should be simple.
;-)

This is why I tend to agree with your first post:
<The route I usually take is to abandon vertical rulings, other than in the fixed-height header, and rely on horizontal ruling only, which will automatically move to accommodate the longest entry.>
...and be done with it.

If I need vertical lines, I'll use a table or query.
;-)

Jeff