Reporting Question

[ERC2]

I see this often in the work I do and I do not know how to get around it. I create charts that summarize data by district, by grade, by school, by class. I can make dynamic charts and even get the titles and labels to refresh dynamically. What I am 100% clueless about is how to capture this in a report. For now I end up laboriously copying each chart into publisher and then formatting and then converting into a PDF. I typically end up making 20 versions of each chart and a report typically has 3-9 charts. There has got to be a faster way. I would appreciate your suggestions. I have used access in the past but I am limited by their charts. Thanks

 

[elmer007]

I'm not sure that I understand exactly what you're trying to do. Are you trying to create a report that consists solely of charts (e.g., one chart per page in a 20 chart/page report)? Or is there some text involved on the pages as well? Basically, what does the final product you are seeking look like?

 

[ERC2]

I'm not sure that I understand exactly what you're trying to do. Are you trying to create a report that consists solely of charts (e.g., one chart per page in a 20 chart/page report)? Or is there some text involved on the pages as well? Basically, what does the final product you are seeking look like?

The final product will consist of the exact same charts for all grade levels (grades 2-8) for ELA and Math. to give you a specific example, the first chart will be a district summary that will show the mean, SD, and count for that grade and subject (let's say ELA for this example). The next chart will show how the various schools did in rank order in terms of mean scores. The next chart will show each teacher's class results by school. The final two charts will be a top 10 and a bottom 10 for the classes by the district for that grade and subject. I will repeat the exact same format for this grade for math and then I will go to the next grade level, repeat, repeat etc.

In this instance I am not adding any special text or analysis other than a header for the grade and subject. I created this by using a pivot table and then pulling data from it to make the charts and tables. I hope that clears things up. Let me know what is not clear.

 

[elmer007]

For my reports, I've spent a little time getting the formatting to look right in excel (not the simplest task), then I just print them to PDF straight from excel. The tricky part is getting the page breaks/sizing correct. Or, you can have one chart per tab and print them while grouped (click the first tab, hold down shift, and click the last tab), which will let you have page numbers from 1-20 for the 20 tabs.

For the excel formatting, it's a matter of resizing rows and columns and using fill colors to make it look like how I want it. It's not something easily described via forum, though.