Ariana

I'm not aware of a way in Access to get unaffected text boxes to 'grow'.

Depending on the report, I'll generally take 2 approaches:
1. Set the TextBox background to transparent and put a line at the bottom of the details section to delineate each record.
2. Set the minimum TextBox size such that the smallest record is 2 lines and set the Can Shrink property to 'No'.

Hope this helps,

-Raymond

The only way I know of to force all fields on a row is unpopular.

You would have to highlight all the fields on that row in design view then, on the arrange tab, add a layout, either stacked or tabbed. Layout will automatically resize everything in a row to same height and everything in a column to the same width.

Donald I've actually had something similar to this on my list for a future video. What I personally prefer to do is just not use a background color and not use borders around the text boxes, and then you can't tell if they grow or not lol.

Richard yup, that works unless you're actually looking to have the "table" look wiith all lines vertical and horizontal .

I've had a couple projects that insisted on them and via wasn't an option such as an your previous video for vertical lines and drawing all the lines separately got to be a PITA. That was when I got used to being able to use layout.

I don't use it all the time but now that im comfortable with it it's not too bad....

I still avoid layout view when possible, It messes too many things up.

Have you tried anchoring?

I have used anchoring. Works very nice, but on some jobs, they wanted the table look with blank cells between rows on a report that they wanted to ensure showed up for example "this is the data we have for you, please note changes in the block below" kind of thing.

Not something I like but easy enough to do without adding extra lines or text boxes with layout enabled and using gridlines for empty cells .

Like I said, not something I do all the time but a handy tool to have available. But, if you're not used to them, I understand why people don't use them.

Yeah, reports are one of those areas where I haven't covered a lot in my videos because it's not something I do a lot of. I'd say 99% of the work that I do is on the screen. I rarely print stuff out. So I have most of the nuances of forms and VBA and stuff like that in my brain. But when it comes to reports, I actually have to mess with stuff to figure out exactly how something works. I don't think I've ever tried anchoring in a report before. So, couldn't tell you off the top of my head.

Richard I owe you an apology.
I was just re-reading this thread and then checked through some notes on some things I've worked on and realized I misspoke.

I have used anchoring, but I can't say that I've fully used it properly. On a couple projects that I used it on my comments on whether I like were basically "inconclusive" because none of that data caused any expansion or contraction during my testing. So it didn't NOT work but I can't say that it worked well either. I haven't gotten any complaints about those reports from the people I created them for.

In three other projects I tried it on, I noted "overlapping" problems. I ultimately switched to layout grids just do to time constraints. That, "Do what you know best" effect.

So, it was premature for me to say "Works very nice". I just didn't want anyone else to try using it based on my comments and it not work well. Anchoring may work great, it may not, but felt that it was important to correct my prior inaccurate statement.

To paraphrase something I've heard, "I can BS with the best of them, but I won't knowingly or intentionally on matters of importance."

So you're guilty of The Confidence Trap? LOL

OK, I'm a big dummy. Anchoring doesn't exist in reports, only in forms. In reports you can't rely on Can Grow or VBA to stretch side-by-side fields together. The trick is to set the text box borders to transparent and then draw your own lines or rectangles around them. That way you can make the boxes look like they expand to the same height without actually changing their properties. I show exactly how to do this in my vertical lines video, so check that out for the step-by-step. It's one of those things I spent days banging my head on until I realized the simple solution was just to draw the lines myself.

This is where I tend to fall back to enabling layout - I've actually gotten fairly comfortable using it. It will automatically force the height of all controls (except checkboxes and radio buttons) the the same size in a row or with to a column and then gridline properties make it easy to have table-like boxes, row lines or vertical lines without having extra line controls or having to use VBA.

And, really, the fact I added layout controls to my repertoire is your fault Richard, lol. I hated them every time I tried to use them. I thought to myself, "Why have all these stupid properties in the property dialog that don't do anything except make it harder to move stuff around?", lol. But then, I think it was in Quick Queries # 17, you told us how gridlines could work (even though you acknowledged you didn't care for it), and that spurred my curiosity and I started playing around and got used to both the pros and cons of layout.

In fact those kinds of events are what have allowed me to explore other little used features just because I like knowing "what's under the hood," even if I don't use it.