Address Block Format
By Richard Rost
3 years ago
Add Formatting to Your Report Address Block
In this Microsoft Access tutorial we're going to take the address block that I showed in my previous Address Block video and add formatting to it including colors, bolding, and font size.
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Address Block
Make sure to set your text box to Rich Text. My HTML editor mangles the code if I put the text here, so I'm including it as an image for you:
Keywords
access 2016, access 2019, access 2021, access 365, microsoft access, ms access, ms access tutorial, #msaccess, #microsoftaccess, #help, #howto, #tutorial, #learn, #lesson, #training, #database, add rich text formatting to address block in reports
Intro In this video, I will show you how to add rich text formatting to an address block in your Microsoft Access reports. We will review how to use HTML tags to apply bold, color, and different font sizes to individual parts of your address block, all within a single unbound text box. You will learn how to switch your control to rich text, replace line breaks with HTML equivalents, and customize your address block for a more professional look.Transcript In today's video, I'm going to show you how to add formatting to your report address block in Microsoft Access.
This video is a follow-up to another video I did about a week ago where I showed you how to make a professional-looking address block in your Access reports. Instead of having your fields all spaced out, I told you how to put them all together in one block and hide things that aren't there. You get rid of missing spaces and all that stuff.
I got a bunch of emails and people posted comments asking if it's possible to add formatting inside this block, since it's one field. How can I add some color, bold something, or change the font? That's what I'm going to show you how to do in today's video. We'll add a little color and change the font size.
If you have not yet watched this video, go watch it first so you know what I'm talking about. You'll find it on my website or on my YouTube channel. There's a little QR code you can scan if you want to.
Here I am back in my TechHelp free template. I didn't save the database from the previous video. I don't always save them. I make sure I save them if I'm going to make an extended cut so I can give the Gold members their download. Sometimes I save it if there's a lot of cool stuff in it, but that was just one field in the report, so I didn't bother to save it.
If you go to my website, I always tell you to check my website because sometimes I put extra notes or addendums or things on there that I don't always put on YouTube. If you scroll down, I put that crazy address block right there so you can just copy and paste it. We'll use that.
I'm going to copy it to my clipboard. Whoops, too much. Right there. Copy.
There's always a link to my website in the description under the YouTube video if you're watching on YouTube. Here's the YouTube page. Come down here. This big gray block - they do a good job of hiding it. I click the show more, scroll down, and you'll see right there under the Learn More link. That's where the page is on my website for this video.
Oh, I did put the address block here. How nice of me. It's down here, too. I forgot I did that.
Anyway, copy this.
Let's recreate that address field real quick. We added an Address2 field to the Customer table. Insert here, Address2. This way I can show you if it's missing stuff. Save that and we'll leave it blank. I don't care about the data.
We also need to add it to the OrderInvoiceQ design. We have to find that. There it is. Double click. Put it at the end. There it is. Save it. Close it.
Now we can adjust the invoice. Go to an order, go to invoices. There's our address block.
Let's go to design view. I'll get rid of everything but the first name block. We'll just make this one bigger.
Double click. Go to "All." Set the name to AddressBlock and the Control Source. I'm going to zoom in, Shift+F2. It's going to be what we copied from the clipboard. That thing.
Hit OK. Save it. Close it. Close it. Open it. There we are. Now, we are right back where we were at the end of the address block video. That's why I don't save things I don't plan on doing more with.
How do I get formatting in this if it's one field? I can come up here and change the format. I can change the font and make it whatever, but how do I change the individual elements inside here?
The trick is: Rich text. You can use rich text. We've done it before in a form and in a report to put some formatting inside of a text field.
How does this apply to our invoice? This isn't a bound field. It's a collection of a bunch of different bound fields. Double click on that, bring up the properties. Go to Data. It's under Data, not Format. It's the type of data that the field stores. Text Format, switch this to Rich Text.
Save it. Close it. Open it back up again. You'll see the data is still there, but notice that our line breaks are not working. It's all crammed together on one line. That's because that VB new line, the 13 10, those characters we use, don't work in rich text. We have to replace those with HTML line break characters. This actually makes it easier to read.
Let's go over here. We'll zoom in. Everywhere you see a CHR(13) CHR(10) pair, we're going to replace that with "<br>" like that. That is the HTML equivalent for a line break. Then we're going to copy that and paste it here, and here, and there. Now we just took what we had and translated it to something that will display better with rich text.
Let's take a look now. Looks better. We've got our line breaks back.
Let's throw in some bold. Right click, Design View. Let's go back into here, Shift+F2. Let's bold the first name field. We need to put it before FirstName and after LastName. I'm going to put it right in front of that parenthesis because this whole thing is like one block. So, right in front of there, after the first two parentheses, I'm going to put a <b> tag. You can use <strong> if you like. Then after that one, right here, we're going to put </b> like that. So, start bold, end bold.
Save it. Close it. Open it. There we go. My name is in bold. Now you can see it. Look at that.
What HTML tags can you use? It's a small subset. There's a list of them. I'm sure you can find it with a Google search. I have a video coming out soon where I'm going to cover them in a little more detail. There's some pretty cool stuff you can do with these HTML tags, but let's do one more. Let's change the font size and color.
Right click, Design View. Again, zoom in. Right inside this tag here, we're going to go <font size="4">. These aren't the point sizes that the regular font is in Access. They're HTML sizes. I think 3 is the default, so this one will be a little bit bigger. Two or three, I can't remember. You just have to play with it and visually see how you like it.
Then color equals, and let's do a hex color, which will be #0000FF, and then close the tag. If you don't know hex colors, that's the red component, that's the green component, that's the blue component - RGB, and it's from 00 to FF - it's hexadecimal. If you want to learn more about hex colors, go watch this video. I talk all about them in the RGB function.
Don't forget to close your font tag. Hit OK. Let's close it. Save it. Open it. There we go. Blue, a little bit bigger, and bolded.
That's how you can add formatting to that individual field, that address block in your invoice or whatever report you happen to be working with.
If you want to learn more about these colors and HTML tags that you can use in Access, I have another video coming out soon. Make sure to get on my mailing list if you want to get notified. Also, subscribe to my channel and you'll get notifications there as well.
I have an older HTML 101 class on my website. It's free. I'll put a link to this down below as well. It's a little over an hour long. It's from 2002, but HTML really hasn't changed that much. All the stuff that I cover in this video is still valid. You can't use every HTML tag in Access, but a lot of them - fonts, bolds, and all that kind of stuff. So check it out if you want to.
There's my old logo. When I started the company, I used to ship CDs for $5.99. That's where 599 comes from, and it's a nice short domain name, so I kept it. All the links on my site go to 599cd something.
There you go. There's your TechHelp video for today. I hope you learned something. Live long and prosper. I'll see you next time.Quiz Q1. What is the primary goal of the tutorial in the video?
A. To create a new table in Access
B. To show how to add formatting to an address block in an Access report
C. To export Access data to Excel
D. To build a custom VBA function for Access
Q2. Before adding formatting, what problem did the original address block solution solve?
A. Automatically filling in missing addresses
B. Combining fields into one block and hiding empty elements
C. Sorting customer records by address
D. Encrypting address data for privacy
Q3. Why is using "rich text" important for the address block field?
A. It allows you to use multiple databases at once
B. It enables formatting such as bold, color, and different font sizes inside one field
C. It improves the print quality of the report
D. It automatically corrects spelling mistakes
Q4. Where do you set the Text Format property for the address block control in Access?
A. Under the Format tab in Properties
B. In the Data tab of the control's property sheet
C. By changing the table design
D. Through the page setup menu
Q5. When changing the address block to rich text, what HTML tag is used to insert a line break?
A. <tr>
B. <br>
C. <p>
D. <lb>
Q6. After switching to rich text, why do you need to replace CHR(13) CHR(10) with "<br>"?
A. Rich text fields only support commas as separators
B. Access reports no longer support the new line character in rich text
C. "<br>" is the recognized HTML way to create line breaks in rich text
D. "<br>" automatically generates a new text box in Access
Q7. Which HTML tag would you use to make part of the address block bold?
A. <i>
B. <u>
C. <bold>
D. <b>
Q8. Which statement is true regarding the font size tag when used in the Access rich text field?
A. The font size must be specified in points (e.g. 12pt)
B. Font size values in HTML are relative numbers, not the same as Access font sizes
C. You can only use font size 3
D. Font size must be set in pixels only
Q9. What color will the code color="#0000FF" produce in the address block?
A. Black
B. Red
C. Green
D. Blue
Q10. What is a limitation discussed regarding HTML tags for formatting in Access rich text fields?
A. Access supports all HTML tags from the latest specification
B. Only a subset of HTML tags are supported, but enough for basic formatting
C. HTML tags cannot be used at all in Access reports
D. Only italic formatting is allowed
Q11. Why did the instructor emphasize copying the address block example from the website?
A. It contains macros for automation
B. It is more complex than what could be written from scratch quickly
C. It ensures the formatting and spacing are correct for the tutorial
D. Because Access does not allow manual text input
Q12. What would happen if you forget to close your HTML tags (such as <b> or <font>) in the address block?
A. The field will be blank
B. Formatting may extend to unwanted parts of the block or not appear at all
C. Access will auto-correct your tags for you
D. The report will not open
Answers: 1-B; 2-B; 3-B; 4-B; 5-B; 6-C; 7-D; 8-B; 9-D; 10-B; 11-C; 12-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 TechHelp tutorial from Access Learning Zone is all about adding formatting to an address block in your Microsoft Access reports.
A little while ago, I created a video showing you how to build a clean and professional-looking address block in your Access reports. Instead of spreading out your address fields, I demonstrated how to combine them into one field, hiding any empty fields in the process so that your address block always looks neat and you do not have issues like missing spaces. After that video, I received quite a few questions about whether it is possible to add formatting within this address block, such as adding colors, making certain parts bold, or changing the font for parts of the text. That is exactly what I am going to show you in this lesson. Specifically, I will demonstrate how to add some color and change font size.
If you missed the original video about creating the address block, I recommend watching that first so you know the foundation we are building on. You can find it both on my website and on my YouTube channel.
For today's demonstration, I am using my TechHelp free template. I did not save the database from the previous video because I generally only save them if I plan on making an Extended Cut or if there is content I want to provide as a downloadable file for members. In this case, it was just one report field, so I didn't save it.
Whenever you visit my website, you will often find extra notes and resources that I do not always post on YouTube. For the address block example, I have posted the code right on the page, so you can easily copy and paste it yourself.
To set up the address block again, I added an Address2 field to the Customer table, leaving its value blank for now so I can show you how missing data is handled. I also included this new field in the OrderInvoiceQ query design, placing it at the end and saving the layout.
Next, I opened the report for invoices, switched to Design View, and focused on the address block field. I set its name to AddressBlock and pasted in the control source expression that creates the address block, just as we did in the previous video.
Up to this point, the field displays the whole address block as unformatted text. If you want to format only certain pieces within this block, such as making the name bold or changing colors, the trick is to use Rich Text formatting. Access allows you to treat a text box with Rich Text formatting so you can use HTML tags for additional styling.
This address block is not a simple bound field - it's constructed from several different fields. To enable formatting, you need to set the Text Format property to Rich Text in the field's properties under the Data tab. Once you save and reopen the report, you'll notice something odd: all your line breaks have vanished and the address appears crammed onto one line. That is because the usual line break characters in VBA, Chr(13) and Chr(10), don't work with Rich Text. With Rich Text enabled, you need to replace these line breaks with the HTML line break tag, which is "<br>". Go through your expression and replace every instance of Chr(13) & Chr(10) with "<br>". This will restore the line breaks in your address block when using Rich Text.
Now for adding formatting such as bold text. If you want, for example, to make the customer's name bold, simply add the HTML <b> tag before the first name and a closing </b> tag after the last name in the address block expression. Save your changes and preview the report, and you will see the name now appears in bold.
You are not limited to just bold formatting. Access supports a subset of HTML tags inside Rich Text fields - there are lists of supported tags online, and I have an upcoming video where I will cover these in more detail. For now, let's look at changing the font size and color. Go back to the expression and, for the portion you want to format, insert a <font> tag with the desired size and color attributes. For example, you could specify size="4" (which is a little larger than the default) and color="#0000FF" for blue text. Remember to use the correct hexadecimal color codes, which represent red, green, and blue values from 00 to FF. If you aren't familiar with hex color codes, I have a separate lesson where I explain them and the RGB color functions.
After you insert your new font tag and save the changes, preview the report again to see your chosen text in a larger, blue, bold font. That's all there is to it.
This approach lets you add rich formatting to any field you construct in Access reports using Rich Text. While Access only supports a limited range of HTML tags, it covers the basics like bold, font size, and color quite well. If you want to explore more about using HTML tags in Access or learn about color codes, I recommend my free HTML 101 class available on my website. Although it's a bit older, all the information about supported tags and formatting still applies. You cannot use every HTML tag in Access, but you can use many for basic formatting needs.
That covers today's TechHelp topic. For a complete video tutorial where I walk you through all these steps in detail, visit my website at the link below.
Live long and prosper, my friends.Topic List Combining multiple fields into one address block
Adding an Address2 field to the Customer table
Including Address2 in the OrderInvoiceQ query
Setting up the address block control in a report
Changing a report text box to Rich Text
Fixing line breaks in Rich Text controls using <br>
Adding bold formatting with HTML tags in Rich Text
Changing font size and color with HTML tags
Using hex color codes in Access report fields |
