Export to Word 2
By Richard Rost
2 years ago
Export Access Reports to Word with Format & Images
In this Microsoft Access tutorial, I will show you how to successfully export reports to Word while preserving intricate formatting, including boxes, lines, and images. This ensures your exported documents retain their professional appearance and detail.
Sami from Windsor Locks, Connecticut (a Moderator) asks: I have a nicely formatted report with boxes, etc. Is there a way to export this report to Word and maintain formatting? When I export it now, I lose most of the formatting.
Members
In the extended cut, I will walk you through automating the steps to export a PDF file, then we will learn how to open Word in the background, load up the PDF file, and proceed with editing, all with just one click.
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!
Prerequisites
Links
Recommended Courses
Keywords
TechHelp Access, export Access reports to Word, maintain formatting in exports, preserve lines in Word exports, include images in Word exports, convert Access reports to PDF, PDF to Word conversion, Access to Word tutorial, exporting data with formatting, enhance Access export fidelity
Intro
In this video, I answer a forum question about how to export a well-formatted report from Microsoft Access to Microsoft Word while preserving formatting, lines, and images. I will show you how to use a simple two-step process by first exporting your Access report as a PDF and then importing the PDF into Word for best results. We'll compare the standard Access export to Word with this PDF method, look at layout adjustments in Word, and I'll share a couple of useful online PDF-to-Word converters for even better fidelity. We'll also briefly discuss automated and third-party solutions for more advanced needs.
Transcript
Today's video is going to be a follow-up to my original export to Word video where I showed you how to export a report from Access into Word, but we didn't cover how to export the formatting, the cool stuff, pictures, and lines and things of that nature. So we're going to talk about that in today's class.
Today's question comes from Sammy in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. He's one of my good friends and moderators on the website. He posted this in the forums. He says, "I have a nicely formatted report with boxes, et cetera. Is there a way to export this report to Word and maintain formatting? When I export it now, I lose most of the formatting." Well, Sammy, you can't do it directly from Access, but with a two-step process, we can maintain the formatting in your report.
What we're going to do is we're going to export it as a PDF, then we're going to import the PDF into Word. Now, in my original export to Word video, I showed you how to export a simple report to a Word document directly from Access, but you don't get any of the formatting. It just exports it as an RTF file, a rich text file. And you don't get any lines or pictures or any of that stuff.
In the extended cut, I showed you how to export something by directly controlling the Word document. But that's okay. It's a little more difficult. But today, I'm going to show you a nice, easy trick using converting it to PDF as an intermediary step.
I'm going to use my invoicing database to export an invoice and, more specifically, I'm going to use a database that I just built last week, which was my vertical lines database. I had to put these vertical lines right in there, right? Okay, because you know it just adds more stuff to export. We're going to throw a picture down here, and everything.
So if you haven't watched any of these videos, you'll find them in the links section below under prerequisites. Watch those first and then come on back. I'm gonna go grab a copy of the vertical lines database. It's right here. I'm a gold member on my own website. If you're not a gold member, then you have to do this yourself, following along with the videos of course.
Okay, my database. I got a customer form. The customers can have orders, and each order can be printed out as an invoice. And this is what we did in the extended cut. We can see the lines there. Ooh, uh. Let's go ahead real quick and also throw a picture on that invoice. Let's say you've got a company logo or something. Let's put it, I'll put it down here on the bottom. Let's stick it in the report footer. Like right under here.
I'm just going to go grab a screen grab of a picture and will be stated in here, and of course, it's not other than the man himself, don't pick up right there, uh... say that was close it, let's take a look at what we got. It looks pretty good, right? They don't mention the quality here in the print preview. Now, if I save this to a Word document directly, okay, if I come over here and go export to Word. Alright, see, notice it's coming out as an RTF file. Alright, we'll open it when we're done. We'll hit OK. The file already exists because I ran through this a minute ago. Just say yes to replace it.
And here it comes over here. Let me slide this over so you can see it. And it's okay. It's not bad. But we're not getting any of our lines. We're not getting Mr. Picard down here in the bottom. Okay, because when you export an RTF file, it's only text. Yeah, it saves some things like bolding and fonts and font sizes and stuff, but you're not getting any of the formatting as far as the lines and stuff are concerned.
Okay, so we have to go about this another way. And the way we can do this is to use an intermediate step, an intermediary. So we're going to convert this to a PDF file first.
I've got several other videos on converting to PDF. I'll put links to those down below. But it's real simple. Pick where you want it to go. I'll put it on my drive, and I'm going to export it as a PDF file. PDF file. Alright. Minimum size is usually good unless you're sending it to a book printer or something and you need high quality. Hit publish. You'll get the export steps up here. I'm just going to close that.
Now it may load for you automatically in your PDF viewer. I have that turned off, so let me go find it. Here's my My Drive folder. There's my invoice PDF. Let's open that up. And there we go. There's the PDF file. Now that looks a lot closer to the original report. And there's Mr. Picard. There it is.
Okay, now here's the key. We're now going to take this PDF and open this in Microsoft Word. So I'm just going to load up Word. That's the easiest thing. Find it on your taskbar, load it up. Give it a second. Come on. Alright, and then Microsoft Word opens up. Let's go down here to open and then browse, and then I'll go to my my drive folder and open up the PDF right from here. Hit open. Now it's going to open it in protected view. That's okay. Just hit enable editing, and now you're in edit mode so you can edit this guy.
Close up the ribbon there, and as you can see, it's a lot closer to the actual document. Word does a pretty good job of importing PDF files better than Access does at writing Word documents. Now it's not perfect. In fact, it has a problem with page footers. Notice how this page footer got pushed to the next line over here. You can fix that.
What I like to do is turn the paragraph markers on. And then come down here, and we can just do this. Put a couple of them on right now that I thought you can do, right? But this is a pretty close, editable version of your report now. There are some tools that I found that do an even better job if you want to closely match the formatting that you've got, uh... but it involves again another step.
In fact, Adobe, the makers of Adobe Acrobat, the PDF people, have an online converter. There it is. I'll put a link to it down below, where you can just drop a PDF file here, and it will convert it to Word. Alright, so I'll slide this over here. I'll find my PDF file right there. Let me make this so I can do it side by side. Right-click, drag, drop. Give it a second. It'll make the conversion for you, and there it is. I can download that file, open it up again, enable editing, and there you know, you can see this one is even a lot closer to the original. Decided that's up for it, right?
So if you don't mind taking that extra step to use an online converter, then Adobe's got one on the website. There's also another one that I tried called SmallPDF. It does the same thing, and again, I put links to these down below, and no, I don't make any money off of them. I just, I tried them myself, I like them, I'm referring you to them.
Now, if you want to use some other options. Uh... If you have the full Adobe Acrobat Professional, which is paid software, you can automate the conversion process using VBA because Acrobat Pro comes with a COM add-in that you can then use your VBA commands to control it. I don't have it. I've never used it. I've read a lot of good things about it online, but I've never personally had a need for it, so I don't have any experience with it. But you can automate pretty much anything you can do with Acrobat Pro.
There are some third-party command line utilities. I downloaded and played with a couple of them, but I wasn't very happy with them. I was looking for something that was just a simple command line utility that I can issue a command that says, "Hey, convert this PDF to a doc file." I tried a couple of them. They were okay, but they weren't great, but there are tons of them out there. So I'm sure if you take the time and do some research, you can probably find a good one. Then you can automate that from Access if you know how to program it.
Right in your VBA, you just save the PDF, run the utility to convert it to a doc file, and then import it into Word. And finally, there are some other online cloud conversion utilities that you can use an API with to program that as well. You can upload the document to them in the background, they'll convert it, and you can download it right back to your system. Again, that requires a lot of programming. I tinkered with it for a few minutes, but it was pretty complicated, and I'm like, it's not worth the effort. So I stopped messing with it.
But one of them is Cloud Convert. They have a ton of different conversion utilities online. And if you guys want to see any of this stuff, let me know. If you have a preferred command line utility that you're familiar with, that you work with, that works well for you, let me know. And if enough people are interested, I'll make another video.
Speaking of automating the process, members in the Extended Cut, I'll walk you through automating these steps. That's not hard. I've covered something similar in previous lessons. What we'll do is we'll automate the exporting of the PDF file, then we'll open Word in the background, load up the PDF file, and then you can go right to town with one click. That's all covered in the Extended Cut. For the members, silver members and up get access to all of my Extended Cut videos.
And Gold members, as you've seen, can download my databases that I build in these TechHelp videos. But that is going to be your TechHelp video for today. I hope you learned something. Lots more training is available on my website. Check it out. Live long and prosper, my friends. I'll see you next time.
TOPICS:
Exporting Access reports to Word with formatting
Answering a question from a website forum member
Direct export to Word as RTF loses formatting
Using PDF as an intermediary step for exporting
Exporting an Access report as a PDF
Importing a PDF file into Word for formatting
Adjusting an exported report in Word
Using paragraph markers in Word for layout editing
Using Adobe's online converter to convert PDF to Word
Using SmallPDF online converter for PDF to Word conversion
Automating conversions with Adobe Acrobat Professional's COM add-in
Exploring third-party command-line PDF to DOC conversion utilities
Access VBA to automate exporting and converting files
Utilizing online cloud conversion services with API integration
Cloud Convert online conversion service
Automating PDF export and Word import process in VBA (Extended Cut)
Quiz
Q1. What is the main topic of the video tutorial?
A. How to export reports from Access to Excel
B. How to maintain formatting when exporting reports from Access to Word
C. How to import PDF files into Access
D. How to create a report with boxes in Access
Q2. Why can't you directly export a report with full formatting from Access to Word?
A. Because Access does not support Word documents
B. Because Access can only export as a plain text file
C. Because the direct export only creates an RTF file without lines or pictures
D. Because Word does not support importing Access formats
Q3. Which two-step process is suggested to maintain formatting when exporting a report from Access to Word?
A. Export as a CSV file and then open in Word
B. Export as a PDF file and then open the PDF in Word
C. Convert to an XLSX file and then import into Word
D. Save as a PNG image and then import the image into Word
Q4. What did the video creator use to demonstrate the exporting process?
A. A customer database with customer profiles
B. An invoicing database with vertical lines
C. A product catalog with images and descriptions
D. A simple contacts list without any formatting
Q5. Why should you convert the report to a PDF file before importing it into Word?
A. Because PDFs can only be viewed and not edited
B. Because Word has better capabilities in importing PDF files than Access does in writing Word documents
C. Because PDF files are smaller and easier to handle
D. Because converting to PDF adds additional security to the document
Q6. Which issue does the presenter mention you might encounter when importing the PDF into Word?
A. The PDF will not have any text
B. The pictures in the PDF will be of low quality
C. Page footers might not be aligned correctly
D. The PDF file will become corrupt during import
Q7. What is one online tool that the video presenter mentions can be used for a better conversion from PDF to Word?
A. Microsoft's PDF Converter
B. Adobe Acrobat's online converter
C. Google Docs PDF to Word feature
D. PDFOnline's Word Converter
Q8. According to the video, what can members in the Extended Cut learn more about?
A. How to directly export a report with formatting from Access to Word
B. How to upgrade their membership to Gold
C. How to automate the steps of exporting a report and importing into Word
D. How to import Excel files into Access
Answers: 1-B; 2-C; 3-B; 4-B; 5-B; 6-C; 7-B; 8-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 export a formatted Access report into Microsoft Word while preserving the layout, graphics, lines, and other special features. In my original video about exporting to Word, I explained how you can send a report from Access straight into Word. However, this method only gives you the plain text and basic formatting, with all of the images, lines, boxes, and other design elements stripped out. Today, I want to show you a better approach so you get a result that looks much closer to your original report.
The question came in from the forums, asking if it's possible to maintain the formatting when exporting an Access report to Word. If you have a report with carefully designed boxes, images, or company logos, the standard export to Word just does not cut it. Access only exports to Word in RTF (Rich Text Format), and that will not include things like pictures or lines. Bold text and font choices might survive the trip, but that's about it.
So what can you do instead? There is a two-step process that gives you much better results: first export your report from Access as a PDF, and then import that PDF into Word. Let me walk through exactly how this works.
I will demonstrate the process using my sample invoicing database, specifically with a version that has added vertical lines and a company logo to the invoice report. These extra design features show up perfectly in Access preview but are lost if you use the regular Word export.
If you have not seen how to create reports like this, you'll want to review the prerequisite videos listed on my website. Once you have your report designed with all the lines and images in place, export the report as a PDF file. Saving as a PDF is very straightforward in Access. You can save it anywhere you like, and the result should faithfully reproduce everything you see in the report preview, including your company logo and any vertical lines or boxes you have drawn.
Once you have the PDF, the next step is to open that PDF in Microsoft Word. Simply launch Word, go to the Open command, and choose your exported PDF file. Word will load the PDF and prompt you to enable editing. What you'll see is a document that looks much closer to the original Access report than anything you could get with a direct export. Of course, even this is not perfect. Sometimes, for example, footers get pushed to the next page, but this can usually be fixed with just a bit of cleanup using paragraph markers. Word is actually quite good at converting PDF layouts into editable documents, certainly better in most cases than Access itself is at generating formatted Word files.
If you want an even closer match, there are several online converters available. One excellent option is the official Adobe PDF to Word converter, available for free on their website. You simply upload your PDF, and Adobe converts it into a Word document that matches the look of your report even more closely than Word's built-in import feature. Another similar service is SmallPDF, which works the same way. Links to both of these tools are available on my website. I use them myself, and I am recommending them simply because they work well, not because I receive any compensation.
For those who wish to automate this process further or need to do it frequently, there are some advanced options. If you have Adobe Acrobat Professional (the paid version), it offers a COM add-in that you can use with Access VBA to control the PDF-to-Word conversion automatically. I have not personally used this feature because I have not needed it, but many people have had success with it.
There are also third-party command-line utilities that convert PDF files to Word documents, which could potentially be controlled from VBA. In my experience testing a few, results were mixed, but there are so many options available that with some research, you may find one that meets your needs. This approach allows you to programmatically convert reports in your Access application without much user interaction.
Cloud-based file conversion services are another possibility. Some of these, like Cloud Convert, offer APIs that you can integrate with VBA code to automate the upload and download of converted files. This is a more complicated solution and is usually better suited for advanced users with programming experience.
For those interested in automation, in today's Extended Cut, I will walk through how to automate these steps inside Access VBA. We will create a process that exports a report to PDF, opens Word in the background, loads the file, and prepares it for editing, all with a single click. Extended Cut videos are available for Silver members and above. Gold members can also download copies of my databases, including the ones demonstrated in these tutorials.
If you have tried other PDF-to-Word conversion tools and found something that works especially well, or if you would like to see a tutorial on a particular tool or automation process, let me know. I am always interested in sharing additional techniques if enough students request them.
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
Exporting Access reports to Word with formatting
Direct export to Word as RTF loses formatting
Using PDF as an intermediary step for exporting
Exporting an Access report as a PDF
Importing a PDF file into Word for formatting
Adjusting exported report formatting in Word
Using paragraph markers in Word for layout editing
Using Adobe online converter for PDF to Word conversion
Using SmallPDF for PDF to Word conversion
Automating conversions with Adobe Acrobat Professional COM add-in
Exploring command-line PDF to DOC conversion utilities
Using Access VBA to automate export and conversion
Utilizing cloud conversion services with API integration
Cloud Convert service for file conversions
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