Overlapping Subreports

[gopherking]

Ok, I have searched all over the web for a solution to this, but it seems that Access 2007 has a bug (sometimes) when you create a report with mutliple subreports in it that they begin to overlap one another when viewing the report in "Report View". The report looks fine when you print it out as well as viewing it in "Print Preview" but this doesn't help you when you have users who are viewing the report in your application.



I have seen this issue occur on occassion but it doesn't happen all the time (extremely frustrating!!). However, I have found that there is a work around that you can use if you are unable to resolve the overlapping issue.

The means to get around this is to use Groups and to place your subreport controls into the Group Headers. Simply create a new group in your report as an Expression. In the Expression Builder, enter in "=1" for your first group and follow suit (=2, =3, etc.) for your remaining groups as needed (NOTE: There is a limit of 9 Groups that you can create, so if you have more subreports than 9, you may need to use the Group Footers as well). Once you have created your Groups, just move your Subreport Controls into each header in the order you want them to be displayed and this should resolve your issue.

Other than this, I have seen posts where someone simply recreated their report and it worked just fine, but I have yet to be so lucky. Hope this information can help others who are feeling the same pain. If you have another solutions, please feel free to add it here so that everyone can benefit from it.

[RuralGuy]

Excellent post. Thanks for sharing!

[timgree]

gopherking,

I too have just spent way too long on this problem tonight. This is a very frustrating issue that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to it, but I may have run across something that might explain it.

I have a report that has a mixture of controls on it:

4 sub-reports
3 combo boxes
1 text box
4 memo boxes
2 date/time boxes
1 attachment control

At first I added controls like I did when I was adding them to a form. I would select them from the Add Existing Fields list, or drag them over from the Navigation bar, and then organize them how I wanted. That never worked for me. I tried all kinds of combinations of placements, adding them by groups, one at at time; nothing seemed to work, until...

I decided to plan on how my customer wanted the report to look. Based on that, I added each control individually, one at a time, from the bottom up. I manually dragged each control into a blank area above the next, formatted it the way I wanted, and purposely place each control as close as I could on top of the one below it without them touching. Each time I added a control I switched from Design View to Report View to see if it worked, or if the irritating problem was still there. Surprisingly, when I was done, everything worked.

So far I've done this 5 different times, changing the order of the controls as I add them, and I haven't run into the problem again. As long as I added each control in the order I wanted them from the bottom of the report and working my way up, I haven't seen the problem.

If you have time to try it out, give it a shot and let me know if it works for you.

Tim

[gopherking]

Thanks for sharing Tim! I don't have any reports that I am in dire need of creating right now, but I am expecting a number of them in the near future and I will definitely give your solution a try. I'll let you know the results as soon as I can. Thanks again!