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Select Multiple Records By Richard Rost 
5 years ago
How to Select Multiple Records to be Printed in a Report Have you ever wanted to print a report containing just a few specific customers of your choosing? In this video, I'll show you how to select exactly who you want to print, and then generate the report with one click. Crystal from Chandler, Arizona (a Gold Member) asks: I have about 1000 customers in my table. I need a way to select only a handful of them to mail correspondence to. There is no rhyme or reason behind the selection (the boss just gives me a list) so a query won't work. How can I do this? MembersI'll show you how to force your latest selection to update in the table before opening the report.
Silver Members and up get access to view Extended Cut videos, when available. Gold Members can download the files from class plus get access to the Code Vault. If you're not a member, Join Today! LinksSingle Record Report: https://599cd.com/SingleRecordReport
IntroIn this video, I will show you how to manually select multiple customer records in Microsoft Access so you can include them in a report, query, or form. You'll learn how to add a Yes/No selection field, update your forms for easy selection, create queries to filter only the chosen records, and set up a report to print or mail correspondence to just those selected customers. This video is perfect if you need to highlight specific records without using criteria-based queries.TranscriptWelcome to another TechHelp video brought to you by AccessLearningZone.com. My name is Richard Rost, your instructor.In today's video, I'm going to teach you how to manually select multiple records. If you want to send them in, say, a report or include them in a query or a form, we're going to be able to click them, pick them, and then print them. Today's question comes from Crystal from Chandler, Arizona, one of my Gold members. Crystal says, I have about a thousand customers in my table. I need a way to select only a handful of them to mail correspondence to. There is no rhyme or reason behind the selection. The boss just gives me a list. So a query won't work. How can I do this? I get this question a lot, Crystal. You've got a bunch of customers. You want to only select a handful of them, but you can't use a query. It's not like all customers from New York with sales over $1,000. It's just you have this list, not necessarily even random, because random numbers would be easier. The list of people that you have, for whatever reason, and you've got to send them some correspondence or single them out in some way. The best way to handle this is to simply add a selection field to your customer table, like "Is Selected." Let me show you how to do it. Here's a copy of my blank customer template. We'll start with this. You can download this from my website. There's a link down below. You can get a free copy. OK, here's my customer database. I've got a list in here of about six customers. So let's say I want to pick three or four of them to mail something to. Now, I've got another video which shows you how you can open up a customer and then mail something to just that customer. You set up a report and you can mail it to just them. That's a separate issue. Here, we want to select a bunch. Now, we have an "Is Active" field in this particular database. So we could use that. If not, if you don't have something like that, go to Customer, Design View. OK, here's "Is Active" right there. Yes/No field. Just add a Yes/No field to your database. Obviously, if you're already using "Is Active," make it something else, like "Is Selected." Yes/No value. We'll default that value to No. Now we can select customers at any given time. So save that. Close it. Maybe on my Customer List form, I'll add that to make selection easier. Come out over here, make some room for it, go to Design, Add Existing Fields. So there's my "Is Selected" now. Drag that, drop it right there. I'll delete that label. Then slide that a little closer. Maybe just take one of these labels up here and write "Selected" or just "Select," whatever you want to put in the label. The label is just text for you. The database doesn't care what it says. OK, there's "Select" right there. Save that. Close it. Now, if I open up my Customer List, I can see I can easily select different customers. Now I can set up a report to just print those people. So let's say we're sending them some correspondence. What we'll do now is we'll make a query that just shows the people who are selected. So, let's close that. Create, Query Design, bring in your CustomerT. Bring in just the fields that you want to put in this report. You probably don't need the CustomerID field. Just bring in First Name, Last Name. You can bring in their address if you want to mail them something. We'll keep this short, though. Then we'll bring in "Is Selected." Set the criteria for "Is Selected" equal to True, or Yes, or 1, or whatever you want to call it. So now when I run this query, I see just the people who I've selected. If you don't know how to use query criteria, I've got another video on that. Go watch that now. I'll save this as my Customer Select Q. All right, that's my Customer Select Q. So now I can use this to build a report. Create, Report Design. We're going to base our report on that query now. Go to the All tab over here, and the Record Source is now Customer Select Q. Now I can add existing fields, bring in whatever you want. You probably don't need to bring in that "Is Selected" field. Just drop those there. Of course, you'll format this nice and pretty like you would any correspondence that you're sending out. There's First Name, Last Name. You can concatenate those together to put them in one field. If you don't know what concatenation is, that's putting two strings together. Again, I have another video on concatenation you can go watch. That will let you put First Name and Last Name together in one field. Then you'll put the address here, city, state, zip, all that stuff below it. The body of whatever you want your correspondence to be, you can put that in a label or a text box. Just put that right here. "Dear sir or madam," or whatever. You can put their actual first name there if you want to. Shift+Enter. "Here is some stuff," and you continue on with your letter. Make that black so everyone can see it. Page Setup. Actually, let's go to Format and then make it black. Get rid of that header space. You might want to force a new page after this section is done. Open up the Details section's property. Go "Force New Page After Section." I cover making a letter writer in Access in one of my classes. I'll find the link and put it down in the description below. You can do full mail merge and everything. You can have special fields that fit right into the body of the text. Let's see what this looks like. Save Customer Letter R. That's our Customer Letter report. Open that up and Print Preview. Let's see what we got. We have to turn those boxes off. There's James Kirk. There's the next one. We got that background color too. There are a couple formatting settings you have to change. Design View. First thing is the boxes are on - these have to go. So Format, Shape Outline, Transparent. You can make these bigger or smaller, however you want to do it. Bold them if you wish. I don't like that alternating color. Access tried to be fancy and changes that alternating color. Change the back color here to just white. Then I'm going to copy and paste that. Save the report. Now let's go back to our Customer List and let's add a button down here to print out the report to the selected people. Design View. We're going to go to our command buttons right here. Drop a button down here below. Report Operations. Preview Report. Next, that's the only report we've got in this database. "Selected Customer Report." Next. "Selected Our Report" button, we'll call the button, and then Finish. Here's my Selected Customer Report. Save it. Close it. Now you can come in here. You can pick who is going to receive the letter. So I've got me, Deanna, and Malcolm. Hit the button. There's me. There's Deanna and there's Malcolm. He doesn't have an address. So that's how you do it. That's how you can make a selection of who you want to send this particular report to. Then with one button, there you go. There are your three people that are selected. Now, there's one problem that you might run into with this method, and that's this. If I pick James Kirk right now and hit Print Selected Report, I still only see three over here. He doesn't show up. Why? I'm going to fix it. That's a little more involved and involves a little bit of programming. I'm going to show that in the extended cut for the members. For the rest of you, just know that you have to unselect the record first. If I select Jean Luc Picard, see how that record has the pencil there? That means it's currently being edited. If I click this button, he's not in this set of records yet. You have to leave that record and then come back to it. I'll show you how to fix that in the extended cut. Want to learn more? In the extended cut for members, I will show you how to automatically refresh your selection, so you do not have to remember to leave the record and then go back to it before you click the print button. We'll cover that in the extended cut for members. Silver members and up get access to all of my extended cut videos, and we're approaching 100 now, so there's tons of material for you to watch. How do you become a member? Click the Join button below the video. After you click the Join button, you'll see a list of all the different types of membership levels that are available. Silver members and up get access to all of the extended cut TechHelp videos, live video and chat sessions, and more. Gold members get access to a download folder containing all the sample databases that I build in my TechHelp videos, plus my code vault where I keep tons of different functions that I use. Platinum members get all the previous perks plus access to my full beginner courses and some of my expert courses. These are the full-length courses found on my website, and not just for Access. I also teach Word, Excel, Visual Basic, ASP, and lots more. But don't worry, these free TechHelp videos are going to keep coming. As long as you keep watching them, I'll keep making more. If you liked this video, please give me a thumbs up and feel free to post any comments that you have. I do read them all. Make sure you subscribe to my channel, which is completely free, and click the bell icon and select all to receive notifications when new videos are posted. Click on the Show More link below the video to find additional resources and links. You'll see a list of other videos, additional information related to the current topic, free lessons, and lots more. YouTube no longer sends out email notifications when new videos are posted, so if you'd like to get an email every time I post a new video, click on the link to join my mailing list. If you have not yet tried my free Access Level 1 course, check it out now. It covers all the basics of building databases with Access. It's over three hours long; you can find it on my website or on my YouTube channel. If you like Level 1, Level 2 is just one dollar, and it's also free for all members of my YouTube channel at any level. Want to have your question answered in a video just like this one? Visit my TechHelp page and you can send me your question there. Click here to watch my free Access Beginner Level 1 course, more of my TechHelp videos, or to subscribe to my channel. Thanks for watching this video from AccessLearningZone.com. QuizQ1. What is the main purpose of adding a Yes/No field like "Is Selected" to a customer table?A. To allow users to manually select customers for special processing B. To automatically filter customers with large purchases C. To calculate total sales for each customer D. To sort customers alphabetically Q2. Why would a query not be suitable for Crystal's problem as described in this video? A. Because the selection of customers is arbitrary and not based on set criteria B. Because queries can only select active customers C. Because queries cannot handle more than 100 records D. Because queries only work with random numbers Q3. If you already have an "Is Active" Yes/No field but need to select specific customers, what does Richard recommend? A. Add a new field such as "Is Selected" B. Replace "Is Active" with "Is Selected" C. Sort the customer table by last name D. Use a Make Table query Q4. What is the best way to make picking customers more user-friendly on your Customer List form? A. Add the "Is Selected" field as a checkbox to the form B. Add a dropdown to filter customers C. Create a macro for random selection D. Hide all Yes/No fields from users Q5. When creating a query to show only selected customers, what criteria should be set for the "Is Selected" field? A. Yes/True/1 B. Greater than 1000 C. Not Null D. Like "A*" Q6. How can you make a report that prints only the customers you have selected? A. Base the report on the query that filters by "Is Selected" B. Print the entire CustomerT table C. Use a form filter and print screen D. Only use random selection Q7. In the video, what Access feature does Richard show to concatenate first and last name into one field for a report? A. Concatenation of two string fields B. Using a macro to merge records C. Creating a new text field in the table D. Using the Group By option Q8. What design advice does Richard give for cleaning up the appearance of the report? A. Remove field outlines and set the background color to white B. Use alternating background colors for emphasis C. Always bold all fields D. Print each record on the same page Q9. Why might a newly-selected customer not appear in the report immediately after ticking the box? A. The record is still being edited and has not been saved B. The report query is broken C. The field is set to No by default D. There is a network error Q10. What does Richard say is needed to solve the problem of a currently edited record not appearing in the report selection without user intervention? A. Some programming to automatically refresh the selection B. Deleting the customer and re-adding them C. Changing the field type to Text D. Restarting Access Q11. What do Silver members and up receive access to? A. Extended cut TechHelp videos, live video/chat sessions, and more B. Only free course videos C. One-on-one calls with Richard D. Full database projects only Q12. What benefit do Platinum members receive that Gold and Silver members do not? A. Access to the full beginner and some expert video courses B. Free merchandise C. One-year Access subscription D. Priority YouTube support Q13. What should you do if you want to receive email notifications when new videos are posted? A. Join the mailing list via the provided link B. Enable emails in YouTube settings C. Leave a comment on the latest video D. Upgrade to Gold membership Q14. Where can you find the free Access Level 1 course mentioned in the video? A. On both Richard's website and his YouTube channel B. At local community colleges C. Only on DVDs D. Silver membership only Answers: 1-A; 2-A; 3-A; 4-A; 5-A; 6-A; 7-A; 8-A; 9-A; 10-A; 11-A; 12-A; 13-A; 14-A 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. SummaryToday's video from Access Learning Zone focuses on how to manually select multiple records in your Microsoft Access database. This is a common situation when you need to generate a report or mail correspondence for a specific group of customers, but there is no clear logic or pattern to who needs to be included. For instance, you might have a list provided by your boss and a standard query simply will not work.One of my viewers, Crystal, presented this exact scenario. She has about a thousand customers in her table and needs a way to pick only certain individuals for targeted communication. Since the selection process is not based on any standard criteria, such as location or sales amount, it requires a manual approach. My recommended solution is to add a new field to your customer table, such as "Is Selected." This will allow you to easily mark each customer you need for your next mailing or report. You can simply add a Yes/No field for this purpose. If your current table already has fields like "Is Active," you could either use that or add a new one labeled "Is Selected." Setting the default value to No ensures that all customers are unselected by default. Once that field is in place, enhance your Customer List form to display it. This makes it convenient to check off each customer you want to include. To do this, add the "Is Selected" field to your form layout and apply a suitable label, like "Select." Adjust the formatting as you wish to keep your form organized and user-friendly. With the form ready, you can then move on to creating a query that returns only those customers you have selected. Just include the fields necessary for the report (such as first name, last name, address, etc.) and filter the records to show only those where "Is Selected" is True or Yes. Once your query is ready, the next step is to create a report based on this query. In your report design, pull in the necessary fields, arrange them, and format the report so that it fits your correspondence needs. For example, you might concatenate the customer's first and last names, place their address, and craft a personalized body for your letter. If you are interested in more advanced mail merge techniques or want to know how to insert special fields directly into the letter body, I have other classes covering those topics as well. You might also want to take time to adjust your report formatting. Take care to make text visible, remove extra header space, force each recipient to appear on a separate page, and ensure the design looks professional by removing any unnecessary borders or background colors. Next, you can make the process even smoother by adding a button to your Customer List form. This button will open your print preview report for just the selected customers, allowing you to quickly print the correspondence for all marked individuals. However, there is one potential issue you could encounter. If you select a customer and immediately try to print the report without moving off that record, Access might not recognize your latest selection, since the record is still being edited. The selected customer will not appear in your report until you navigate away from that record. To address this automatically without relying on the user to remember, a bit of programming is needed. In today's Extended Cut for members, I will cover how to refresh your selection automatically so that all selected customers are included without extra steps. Members at the Silver level and above get access to my extended cut videos, which now number nearly one hundred. These detailed lessons include extra tips and solutions to more advanced problems. Gold members receive additional benefits like access to all the sample databases I use in my videos and my code vault. Platinum members get all those perks and access to my complete beginner and some expert courses, which include topics beyond Access such as Word, Excel, and Visual Basic. Remember, my free TechHelp videos will always be available, and as long as you keep watching, I'll keep producing them. Please leave a like if you found this helpful, share your thoughts in the comments, and make sure to subscribe to my channel if you have not already. You can find more resources, related videos, and my free Access Level 1 course in the links below. Email notifications for new videos are not sent out by YouTube anymore, so you can join my mailing list if you want email updates. If you want your question featured in a future video, head over to my TechHelp page and submit your inquiry. For a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here, visit my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends. Topic ListAdding a selection field ("Is Selected") to a customer tableConfiguring the Yes/No field for selecting records Adding the selection checkbox to a continuous form Customizing the selection checkbox label in a form Building a query to filter selected records Setting query criteria to display only selected customers Saving and naming the selection query Creating a report based on the selection query Adding and formatting fields in the report Concatenating fields in report design (mention of use) Customizing the appearance and layout of the report Changing report control outlines and background colors Adding a Print Selected Report button to a form Linking the print button to the customer selection report Testing and using the form to select and print customer reports Troubleshooting record selection limitations with current edits (explained workaround) |
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| Keywords: TechHelp Access select multiple rows, selecting multiple, select non sequential PermaLink Select Multiple Records in Microsoft Access |
