07/20/08

As you're working on a report's design you'll often want to preview how the finished product will look. Unfortunately, if the report's record source is a query that takes a long time to process, the task can be too painful to perform as often as you'd like. In such instances, you can save time and get an idea of how your report will look by using Layout Preview as opposed to Print Preview.

The typical report view you probably use is Print Preview, which shows exactly how the printed version of your data will look.

Unfortunately, this requires Access to fully retrieve and process the record source data. In comparison, Layout Preview grabs a sample of your data to provide a general idea of what the printed report will look like. To see the Layout Preview of a report, open the report in Design view and choose View | Layout Preview from the menu bar. Note that in addition to using just a sample set of data, this view ignores criteria or joins in an underlying query.

This means that if the report contains grouping specifications, the record detail displayed in a record group may not really correspond to that group--it's important to remember that you can't use Layout Preview to audit your data. Also note that if your report's record source is based on a parameter query, you can simply click OK when prompted for a parameter value. You may have to click OK to get through subsequently displayed message boxes, but you'll often be able to preview the layout without having to take the time to enter real parameter values.

Created Date: 12/07/2001  Last Reviewed: 12/10/2001  Rev. Date: