Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Building Great Forms and Reports

Access provides a design and development environment that gives you extensive control over the appearance and functionality of forms and reports. The tools you use for either task are remarkably similar. The differences typically reflect the different design goals of forms and reports, as explained here:

• A form is a formatted database object, generally used to display one record at a time in an onscreen window. Forms are most commonly used to create convenient fill-in-the-blanks windows for entering or editing data; in this case, you use a table or query as the data source for the form.

• Access reports typically organize data in a format suited for printing or publishing. Although you can also use a form to view ...