Access Newbie

[jwashburn]

I help a racing organization and the software that they use is written with an Access back end. The reports that are generated are horrbile. What I do now is run the report (from the front end) and then save it as an Excel document. Then I have to go in and clean up formatting, delete columns etc. It takes a few hours every time we have a race. (every weekend)so that we can post the results on the web. You can see an example of what I do at http://www.estreetmx.com/results/summerseries.pdf

That is an entire summer series of racing. Most of the times the series event are a little shorter (4-5 races).

My question is should I try and create some sort of report in Access, or do I need something like XL report builder?

Ultimately I would rather it just be a PHP page that reads the data and builds the page, but that is much farther down the line. Right now I would just like to create something that can save a lot of time.

 

[giacomo]

I guess it depends on what you're most comfortable with. I am not a big fan of the Access report builder and tend to build my reports in Excel. I think that since you are already having to rework the delivered report in excel, and if you have the ability to dump the data into excel then that would be the best route to go. However, if you want to get a better understanding of Access then this might be a great project to get your feet wet.

Same thing with php, if you already know php or have been itching to learn it then this would be a great project for you. Otherwise I would recommend trying to do it in ASP, since they are both microsoft products I think you gain some advantages using access and asp together.

hth,
Giacomo