Hide Page Footer on First Page
By Richard Rost

6 years ago

How to Hide the First Printed Page in your Reports.

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In this Microsoft Access tutorial, I will teach you how to hide the page footer on the first page of your reports.

Bill from Williamston SC (a Gold Member) asks: Richard, Is it possible to show a page footer on a report only when that report has more than one page?

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Intro

In this video, I will show you how to hide the page footer on the first page of your reports in Microsoft Access. We will walk through building a sample report, configuring the page footer to only display on certain pages using report properties, and discuss how to customize settings so the footer appears only when there are multiple pages. If you want the page footer to skip the first or last page, I will explain which property settings to use and how to adjust your report layout for the desired outcome.

Transcript

Welcome to another TechHelp video brought to you by AccessLearningZone.com. My name is Richard Rost. In today's video, I am going to show you how to hide the page footer on the first page of your reports.

Today's question comes from Bill in Williamson, South Carolina, one of my Gold members. Bill asks, is it possible to show a page footer on a report only when that report has more than one page? Bill posted this today in the Access Forum on my website. I went back and checked all my course outlines and I have not covered this in any of my classes. So I said to Bill, let me put together a TechHelp video for that.

Alright, let's start with my blank customer template. You will find a link to download this on my website in the description below. There is a blank template and there is a simple customer template. It has a basic customer form in it and a customer table, but we do not have any reports in here.

Quick report, so create and then report design. We are going to base this report on the customer table, the only one we have. So let's check the record source here and set that to CustomerT.

Now let's put some data in here in the detail section. Open up existing fields and let's bring in all of this stuff. Drop it right there. We want this to be nice and big so it goes on multiple pages. Looks good. Let's slide it all up like this.

Let's save this as MyCustomerR and let's just take a quick peek at it. Now, when you open up a report in this normal view, it does not really give you an accurate view of what this is going to look like. I like to go into Print Preview all the time. Right-click and then Print Preview. This tells you what it is going to look like when you actually print it.

Let's set our margins real quick. Let's go to Wide and you can see what they look like there.

Alternating background color. See how it goes to gray? Let's go to Design View. Let's change that real quick. Open up the detail section property. See how it has Background 1 and Darker 5? I like to use the system colors, the standard colors, just like that. Copy it and put it down here too. Sometimes for demonstration purposes, it is nice to be able to see that. That is really good if you have very short rows here.

Let's come down and put a page footer down here. Now, the classic page footer is to put the number of pages. Grab a text box. Drop it down here anywhere you want. Get rid of the label.

I cover this in my Access Beginner Level 9 class. Go ahead and open up the properties for this. Let's just call this MyPageText. The control source is going to be: = "Page " & [Page] & " of " & [Pages]

What that does is display Page 1 of 6 or Page 2 of 5, whatever page you are on. Page and Pages are specific keywords, and Access will substitute those for the actual page number.

I will bold that. Format, Bold. Save it, close it, and preview it. It looks good. I will turn the border off and all that stuff, but let's get it working first. Page 2, Page 3, Page 4. I have only got four customers. There are four customers in there.

We have a page footer. Now, Bill does not want that page footer to show up unless there is more than one page. Basically, we are going to hide that page footer on the first page. That way, if there is only one page, it will not show up.

There is a page footer property. Go into the properties for the report. Double-click right there. I like to sort this by Alphabetical up here, then come down to find Page Footer. There it is: Page Footer. This is Page Footer and Page Header.

There are tons of properties in here. I have not covered a lot of these in my classes. They have added some new ones since I did my beginner courses.

Drop this down. There are different options: Not With Report Header, Not With Report Footer, and Not With Report Header and Footer.

That means if you select the first one, it does not print on the first page if you have a Report Header. The second one will not print on the last page if you have a Report Footer, and the third one will not print on the first and last page.

Pick Not With Report Header. Save that. Close it. Print Preview it. Now it is gone because the report header, even if you do not have it specified, is still there.

You can show it in here if you want by right-clicking and picking Report Header/Footer. There it is. Get rid of that color, and you can just shrink it up to nothing. Even if you do not use it, it still generates something with the page footer or the report footer.

Now you will not see it on the first page because it will not show up with the page header.

You can do the same thing for the last page if you do not want it to show up at the last page. Go in the properties, and go to Page Footer. Pick the one Not With Report Header or Footer. It will not print on the first or last page.

Same thing with the Page Headers. You can turn the page headers off.

Save it. Close it. Come back in here. Give me a preview. Nothing on page one. There it is on page two, page three, page four.

For this one, you might need a report footer. Let's put a report footer in here. Let's just put something in here. Print Preview. Let's see. There you go. You do have to have something there.

There is my report footer. You can shut that off.

So that one was nice and quick. Bill, I hope that shows you how to do what you needed to do.

Want to learn more? In the extended cut for members, I cover more with printing on odd and even pages. I will show you how to print book style. Microsoft Word calls it mirroring margins, but I will show you how you can put an alternating page number on the even and odd pages and different sides, and the same with your margins, the page margins: narrow on one side, wide on the other, and then alternate it for printing in book style if you want to do double-sided printing.

Again, that is the extended cut for members, Silver members and up. How do you become a member? Click on the Join button below the video. Silver members and up, you will get access to all of my extended cut TechHelp videos, live video and chat sessions, and other perks.

After you click the Join button, you will see a list of all the different membership levels that are available, each with its own special perks.

But do not worry, these TechHelp videos are going to keep coming. As long as you keep watching them, I will keep making more, and they will always be free.

Quiz

Q1. What is the main purpose of the video tutorial?
A. To demonstrate how to hide the page footer on the first page of a report
B. To create a new customer table in Access
C. To add a signature field to reports
D. To export Access reports to PDF

Q2. Which section of the report is typically used to display the page number information?
A. Report Header
B. Detail Section
C. Page Footer
D. Report Footer

Q3. What is the correct control source to use in a text box for displaying the page number and total pages?
A. = "Current Page: " & [CurrentPage]
B. = [Page] & " Total " & [Pages]
C. = "Page " & [Page] & " of " & [Pages]
D. = "Total Pages: " & [Pages]

Q4. What happens if you select "Not With Report Header" under the Page Footer property?
A. The page footer is never shown on the report
B. The page footer is shown on all pages except the first if a Report Header exists
C. The page footer is only shown on the last page
D. The page footer is shown only on the first page

Q5. Which view does Richard prefer to use for checking the appearance of the report before printing?
A. Layout View
B. Design View
C. Datasheet View
D. Print Preview

Q6. Which property option hides the page footer on both the first and last page of a report?
A. Not With Report Header
B. Not With Page Header
C. Not With Report Footer
D. Not With Report Header and Footer

Q7. What is necessary for the "Not With Report Header" or related page footer property options to take effect?
A. The report must contain at least two tables
B. The report must have a visible Report Header or Footer section, even if unused
C. The page footer must contain images
D. The report must be saved as a PDF

Q8. What additional features are discussed in the extended cut for members?
A. How to create indexes in tables
B. How to add conditional formatting to forms
C. Printing on odd and even pages and book-style (mirroring margins) printing
D. How to merge Access reports with Excel data

Q9. What is the correct process to access extended video content and other perks?
A. Subscribe to the newsletter
B. Click the Join button and become a Silver member or higher
C. Download the sample database
D. Attend a live in-person seminar

Answers: 1-A; 2-C; 3-C; 4-B; 5-D; 6-D; 7-B; 8-C; 9-B

DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks.

Summary

Today's video from Access Learning Zone focuses on how to hide the page footer on the first page of your Microsoft Access reports. This is a question that came in from a viewer who wanted the page footer to display only when the report actually uses more than one page.

To demonstrate this, I am going to use my blank customer template. You can download this from my website if you want to follow along. The starting template contains a simple customer table and form, but we do not have any reports yet.

The first step is to create a new report based on the existing customer table, since that's the only data we have to work with. Once the report's structure is in place, I bring in all the fields from the customer table and drop them into the detail section. I make sure the contents are spaced out enough so that the report runs over several pages, which is necessary to see the effect of any pagination changes.

After saving the report as "MyCustomerR," I take a look at it in Print Preview. I always recommend using Print Preview since it gives you the most accurate picture of what your report will look like when printed. I also adjust the page margins to "Wide" so I can see how it affects page layouts.

Next up, I check the alternating background color in the detail section, which Access uses by default. I prefer to switch this to one of the standard system colors, making it easier to see each row – especially if your records are short.

Now to address the main focus, I add a page footer. The classic use for this area is to display the page number, so I insert a text box with a formula that reads something like "Page 1 of 4." This uses Access keywords to automatically update the numbers on each page of the report.

Once that is set and formatted, I can see the page footer displaying correctly on every page. However, the goal is to hide this footer if the report only contains a single page, or more specifically, to prevent it from showing on the first page. This can be managed through a property setting in the report's options.

Access includes several options for when the page footer is shown. You can access this setting in the report properties under "Page Footer." Among these choices, the one called "Not With Report Header" tells Access not to print the footer on the first page, assuming your report has a report header (even if you're not using it visibly). If you want the footer suppressed on both the first and last page, there's an option called "Not With Report Header or Footer."

For the current example, I select "Not With Report Header," which means the page footer will not appear on the first page. After saving and previewing the report, you will notice the footer is now hidden on page one but appears on subsequent pages. If you add content to the report footer and adjust the settings further, you can also control the footer's visibility on the last page.

The same principle works for page headers if you ever need to suppress those on specific pages.

With these settings, you now have a report where the page footer only displays once your report has more than one page, matching the request from today's viewer.

If you are interested in further customization, in the Extended Cut for members, I go into printing on odd and even pages, including book style formatting. This covers topics such as mirroring margins for double-sided printing, and how to vary things like page numbers and margins so your reports print correctly for booklets or other special layouts.

You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.

Topic List

Creating a report based on a table in Access
Adding fields to the report detail section
Setting report margins in Print Preview
Changing the alternating background color in detail section
Adding a page footer to a report
Creating a custom page number display in the footer
Setting the Control Source for page numbering
Configuring report footer visibility based on page count
Using the Page Footer property in report design
Selecting Not With Report Header to hide page footer on first page
Showing or hiding the report header and footer sections
Configuring page footer to hide on first and/or last page
Previewing report changes in Print Preview
Adding and modifying a report footer in Access