creating advanced reports in Access 2003?

You can use subreports to have different "pages" on your main report. A Subreport can be related to your main report, or it can be independent. If you're brave you can also delve into the world of unbound reports, which allow you quite a bit of latitude.

That said, I've found other reporting engines (like Crystal Reports) to be more adaptive in these areas than the Access report writer. Don't get me wrong: For the price the Access writer is a heckuva product, but products like Crystal are more full-featured, in my opinion.

NO_CARRIER,

Like LMS, I agree that Crystal Reports is much better than Acess for "Advanced" Reports.
The good thing about Crystal is that at the basic level, it is pretty much the same as Access.
But CR carries a bigger price tag than Access.
Access alone is an entire Database package (Data storage, reporting, Forms, Queries), and the 2007 version retails for about 189.00USD.
Crystal reports (Which basically only does reports) retails for about 490USD!
Not to mention the amount of trainig you would have to have, to get up to the "advanced" level.

Crystal is great if you organizations needs reports from multiple platforms (Access, Excel, Text Files,SQL Server, OLEDB, ODCB sources, XML), and you only want your employees to learn 1 reporting tool.


But "Advanced" is a relative term.
Most people would consider Condition Grouping "advanced", most Reporting pros would not.

There is nothing in your post that I can see that Access would not be able to do.
It all depends on the level of customization you need.
And of course, your skill level.

So you will have to be a bit more detailed and specific when you say:
 
"different data metrics" (Terms like this are vague, please be specific)

"breaks down the data in a lot of different ways" (what do you consider "a lot"?, and what are these different ways?)

"Graphs and such" ("and Such"???)

"I've found on the internet, the report maker only makes a simple/single report... nothing fancy"
What do you conside "fancy"?
I have seen some extermely complex and "fancy" Reports created by experts here with Access.
(Can you site the source of this statement?)

The bottom line is that you can create Advanced Reports in Access or Crystal, ...if your skills in Report building are Advanced.
Plain and simple.
;-)

If you are new to Access and you need "Advanced" Reports, you should seek out the services of an Access DBA who specializes in "Advanced Reporting"

;-)

JeffCoachman

A lot of good questions.  I don't think Crystal Reports would be a viable option, I'm basically just stuck with Access 2003 for this project.

My reporting experience is mainly with Cognos' suite of products.

What I'm looking for is a multiple-page report summary.
Where the first page is a grid-chart of administrator statisitcs. (stats broken down by administrator, such as how many records were created by each admin, how many records were classified as "closed", how many records remain "open" (or unresolved)., etc.

after this I would like a similar chart showing the top 10 areas the records are originating from.  (when the record is created, the administrator chooses which "store" sent in the application form.  So we can track the most popular stores and track trends over time.

After this, a vertical bar graph showing the average resolution time per record.  i.e. a ticket can be opened on August 1st, 2008, however not resolved until August 8, 2008.  So the line shows how many records were resolved in 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, etc... all the way up to 14+ days.

After this is a series of pie charts that break down the data in terms of types of requests we've recieved, what percentage were rejected for not having the minimum information required, etc. etc...

The whole report I would like to be defined by a user selected date range. (so anything from a single day, to a week, current month, previous months, or beginning of time... )