Force New Page
By Richard Rost
3 years ago
Use Force New Page Property to Insert a Page Break
In this Microsoft Access tutorial, I'm going to teach you how to use the Force New Page property in a report group footer to insert a page break after every group.
Jack from Manchester, England (a Platinum Member) asks: I just watched your video on report grouping levels, and I've designed a report to give each of my sales reps their list of calls for the day. It's basically the same thing you designed, but instead of the report being grouped on customers, it's grouped on the sales rep, and the customers that they have to call are in the detail section. Is there any way I can generate this so that each sales rep starts on their own page, so they're not all together?
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access 2016, access 2019, access 2021, access 365, microsoft access, ms access, ms access tutorial, #msaccess, #microsoftaccess, #help, #howto, #tutorial, #learn, #lesson, #training, #database, Page break, new page, force a new page, separate page, after section, before section, report page break, report group force new page
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Intro In this video, I will show you how to use the Force New Page property in Microsoft Access Reports to insert a page break after each group, such as sales reps, so that each group starts on a new page. We will walk through setting up group headers and footers, adjusting the Force New Page property, and organizing your report layout so each sales rep receives their own section. This video is for users familiar with report grouping and sorting in Access, looking to improve the presentation and distribution of grouped reports.Transcript In today's video, I'm going to show you how to use the Force New Page property to insert a page break after every group in your Microsoft Access Reports.
Today's question comes from Jack in Manchester, England, one of my Platinum members. Jack says, I just watched your video on report grouping levels. I've designed a report to give each of my sales reps their lists of calls for the day. It's basically the same thing you designed, but instead of the report being grouped on customers, it's grouped on the sales reps, and the customers they have to call are in the detail section.
Is there any way I can generate this so that each sales rep starts on their own page so they're not all together?
Well, yep, that's what we're going to do today. We're going to have it so that in your report, you're going to group by the sales rep, then all of their calls will be underneath that, and each one will start on its own page.
We're going to use something called the Force New Page property in your report. This will be an expert-level course, which means it's past the beginner stuff, but it's not quite developer. We don't need any programming to do this, but you will have to know how to create report grouping and sorting levels, and you'll have to know about relationships and similar topics.
If you have not yet watched this video, which is the video that Jack is talking about on report grouping levels, go watch this first, then come back.
Of course, this one's got some prerequisites on its own, so go watch those too, then come back here and we'll continue.
Here is the database we created in the other video. If you're a Gold member, you can go and download it, or download this new one I did, whichever you prefer. In here, we've got customers, and customers have contacts. We made a report showing each customer with all of their contacts, and that is what we built in the last video, which is right there. I won't print preview that now.
There it is, but you can see all the customers show up on the same report, on the same page in the report.
So if, like Jack is doing, this is a list of sales reps and the calls they have to make, you want to split these off so they're each on their own page.
To do that, let's go into design view. In the other video, we created the customer ID header and footer, which group those things together.
In the footer, go to the properties and find the Format tab. Right in here, you're going to find a property called Force New Page that says after this footer is drawn, after it puts this footer together, I want you to force a new page after it.
There's After Section, and there's Before Section. You can force a new page before the header, or you can force a new page wherever you want. But in this particular case, we're going to force a new page after that section.
Close this, save it, and then open it back up again. Right-click, print preview. There we go. There's page one, page two, page three, and now you can see each customer is on their own page.
What I would also do for this particular report, since you want to give each one of your sales reps a copy of this, is have that customer contact record show up at the top of each page. Right now, we have it in the report header. In design view, I'm just going to move that to the page header, and that way it will repeat on each page. Just take this stuff up here, slide it down here. Then get rid of that, save it, close it.
Print preview again. Now you can see that the page header will repeat on the top of each page, and each of your sales reps gets their own report, and it looks all official.
If you put page numbers down here, they're not going to restart for each group. For example, if Jim Kirk has four pages with the contacts, you might want his to say page one, two, three, four, and then the next sales rep resets to page one. You can do that with a tiny little bit of code. If you want to learn that, go watch this video on how to print multiple invoices. It's the same technique. The invoice, or the order as a whole, is the group level and the detail is the line items on that invoice. That's the detail section, and I cover how to reset the page numbering in that video.
If you want to learn more about reports, specifically the Force New Page property and the report properties, and we do letter templates and all that, that's my Access Expert Level 6 class, so come and check that out too. I'll put a link to all this stuff down below in the comment section. You can click on that and watch it and let me know what you think.
That is going to be your TechHelp video for today. Jack, I hope I answered your question, and I hope the rest of you learned something too. Live long and prosper, my friends. I'll see you next time.Quiz Q1. What is the main purpose of using the Force New Page property in a Microsoft Access Report?
A. To add extra space between records in a report
B. To insert a page break after a specific section or group
C. To filter records based on a condition
D. To sort data alphabetically within the report
Q2. In the example presented, what was the report grouped by?
A. Customer name
B. Type of product sold
C. Sales rep
D. Contact date
Q3. Why would you want to force a new page after each group in a report for sales reps?
A. To summarize data at the end of the report only
B. So that each sales rep's calls are listed on their own page
C. To ensure contacts for each customer are separated
D. To apply different formatting for each group
Q4. Where do you set the Force New Page property in the report design?
A. In the Relationships window
B. In the Format tab of the section's property sheet
C. In the Table Design view
D. In the Query Design window
Q5. What is the effect of moving customer contact record information from the report header to the page header?
A. The information appears only once at the very top of the report
B. The information disappears from the report entirely
C. The information appears at the top of every page
D. The information is shown at the end of the report
Q6. What happens to page numbers when using Force New Page between groups by default?
A. They automatically reset to 1 for each group
B. They do not appear unless you add a macro
C. They continue incrementing across the whole report
D. They are hidden on group pages
Q7. What would you need if you wanted page numbers to restart at 1 for each group in your report?
A. Adjust Force New Page property
B. Add a calculated field in the query
C. Write a small amount of code to reset the page number
D. Change the table primary key
Q8. Which section should you apply Force New Page to if you want a new page after each group?
A. Detail section
B. Group header
C. Group footer
D. Report footer
Q9. What foundational knowledge is recommended before attempting to use the Force New Page property?
A. How to create queries only
B. How to build macros for forms
C. How to create report grouping and sorting levels
D. How to import Excel data
Q10. What is the suggested solution if you want more advanced report features, like letters or templates in Access?
A. Learn VBA programming only
B. Use an external mail merge tool
C. Take the Access Expert Level 6 class
D. Upgrade to the latest version of Access only
Answers: 1-B; 2-C; 3-B; 4-B; 5-C; 6-C; 7-C; 8-C; 9-C; 10-C
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 will cover how to use the Force New Page property to insert a page break after every group in your Microsoft Access Reports.
Jack reached out with a question after watching my video on report grouping levels. He set up a report where each sales representative is grouped separately, and their scheduled calls for the day are listed in the detail section. Now, he wants each sales rep's group to begin on a separate page in the printed report, so the reps' lists are not combined together.
The good news is that this is quite straightforward to accomplish using the Force New Page property in your report. With this property, you can direct Access to start a new page after each grouping, such as after all the entries for one sales rep have been printed. This solution doesn't require any programming, but you should be comfortable with report design basics, grouping, sorting levels, and understanding related database concepts.
If you haven't seen my earlier video on setting up grouping levels in reports, I recommend watching that first. Make sure you've also reviewed any related prerequisite material if you're new to these topics.
For those with access to the sample databases, feel free to use the one created in the grouping video or the updated version for this demonstration. In that example, I grouped a report by customers, with their contacts listed in the details. All the customers appeared together on one continuous report, without page breaks.
To set up a page break so that each group starts on a new page, open your report in design view. In the previous lesson, we added the group header and footer for the customer ID (or sales rep, depending on your data). Focus on the footer of your group - in this case, the customer or sales rep footer. Open the properties for that section and switch to the Format tab. Here, you'll find the Force New Page property. Set this to After Section. This tells Access to insert a page break whenever the footer for that group is processed, ensuring that the next group starts at the top of a new page.
After saving and reopening the report in print preview, you'll see that each group now begins on a separate page. For Jack's scenario, this means each sales rep's calls appear on their own page of the report.
To further polish the report, consider moving key information into the page header. This ensures that important context (like the sales rep's name or summary information) appears at the top of every page, making the printout more professional and easy to follow. Instead of keeping this context in the report header, simply move the relevant fields to the page header. After saving these changes and reviewing the print preview, you'll see that each page is clearly labeled, and the grouping is visually distinct.
One thing to keep in mind is that the standard page numbering in Access reports will continue across groups. If you want page numbers to reset for each group (for example, if Jim Kirk's group has four pages, they should be numbered one through four, and the next rep's section should restart at one), you'll need a tiny bit of VBA. I cover that technique in a separate video focused on printing multiple invoices, where each invoice acts as a group.
If you'd like more in-depth instruction on report properties, including using Force New Page, as well as other features like letter templates, check out my Access Expert Level 6 course. You'll find links to these resources on my website.
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 Using the Force New Page property in Access reports
Inserting page breaks after group sections
Setting Force New Page property in group footers
Difference between After Section and Before Section settings
Moving fields from report header to page header
Repeating group information at the top of each page
Print previewing grouped reports with forced page breaks |
