[Access] Reports and forrms

PrzemoF

What's the point of using reports in MS access? I use forms to input data and I can send forms to pdf/printer if I need a "report", Am I missing something obvious here? In my case layous of the input form and the output report are identical.

pillphil

Not sure if your question is solely related to access or reports in general, so apologies if this is a misguided answer.

Reports are generally used to summarise information from the database.

Where I work, we create reports for the business so they can monitor different stats about the db, e.g. how many new claims were created this week, how much was paid out, that kind of thing. Or you might have a report that shouldn't return any results e.g. eg customers with two simultaneous active claims.

You could find the same answers with sql queries but the business users generally wouldn't know how to use sql and the reports would be tested to ensure their accuracy. The business wouldn't be able to modify the report as easily as sql either, so it prevents them from changing it.

PrzemoF

Thank you very much for the answer! Looks like in my case there are no benefits of using reports - forms is all I need.

Seth Brundle

Reports are designed to be printed. Page setup is easier to manage with these.

In addition, it's possible to build an interface to your database using forms.
Non technical users can click buttons to open other screens and reports, etc.
The underlying tables and queries can be hidden from users. It is also possible to have a simple level of user authentication and security in place here also.

In these situations users can edit data through forms but not through reports (and yes, a form can be set to read only) but hopefully you see my point.