Bug: Report to rtf File

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CC - 24 May 2006 04:49 GMT

I just learned that the export of an Access report to an rtf file randomly
drops the last word of an output text field. Now, I'm trying to decide what
to do to work around this Access bug.

I would like to know how other Access developers are working around this
bug. I really can't have mistakes coming up in the output file.

The output file must be editable. So, a snapshot file will not suffice.

I could use automation to get the Access report to Word. But, the Access
report is pretty complicated. I'm concerned that after a good bit of work
writing the VBA automation code that I might run into another bug. In your
experience, have you found that VBA code that automates output to a word file
is a reliable work-around?

Another possibility is to print to a pdf file. Does anyone know if this is
a reliable option?

Is there some other solution I'm overlooking?

Frankly, I am seriously distressed that this bug has been just sitting in
Access for years Also, I can't imagine why there is no easy way to print an
Access report straight to a Word file. Isn't interoperability supposed to be
the point of Office?

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Rick Brandt - 24 May 2006 12:24 GMT

> I just learned that the export of an Access report to an rtf file
> randomly drops the last word of an output text field. Now, I'm
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> easy way to print an Access report straight to a Word file. Isn't
> interoperability supposed to be the point of Office?

Personally I just use Snapshot format the majority of the time. In those few
cases where the output just HAD to be RTF I wrote routines that use the built in
file i/o command in Access to create my own RTF file. This is not for the faint
of heart, but when finished is very fast and produces a very small document
(bytes-wise) compared to the RTF export routine.

If the report to be exported represents a single record then I would use
mail-merge. If it is tabular with multiple records then I go with the custom
RTF code.

Using PDF writers is very reliable, but you indicated that the file must be
editable. PDF doesn't satisfy that.

Signature

Rick Brandt, Microsoft Access MVP
Email (as appropriate) to...
RBrandt at Hunter dot com

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CC - 24 May 2006 22:16 GMT

Thanks very much, Rick.

I appreciate hearing that a file written with a pdf writer is reliable.
Can't a pdf be edited if the user owns Adobe Acrobat?

It sounds like you believe that custom VBA code is another reliable way of
getting the report to a file that can be edited in Word. That's also
reassuring. Now, I just have to figure out how to do the VBA.

At a user group meeting in Orange County, there was a quick demonstration of
using report events to send out data to a file. Maybe I'll see if I can do
something like that. It sure would be great if I could see some example code
for that.

For now, I've done a temporary work-around. It adds a few dummy non-words
to the end of the textbox during output to an rtf file. Then, using search
and replace with Word automation from Access, I get rid of those words in the
output file. But, I don't know how reliable that work around solution is.
This output file consists of invoices. So, we have to be able to rely on
their accuracy.

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