Access: Bulleted Lists

This week's question comes all the way from Germany! I like that I've got people coming to my blog from all around the world, that's pretty neat.

"How do I make bulleted lists on my Access reports?"

This is a very good question! You'll notice that, unlike Word, there's no easy option on the ribbon to make bulleted lists. Thankfully, there's a somewhat simple workaround for that.

Go to design view for your report. In the detail section, go to the text box of the item you'd like to appear in a bulleted list format. As an example, let's say that the text box currently contains ItemName. Now, you're going to trick Access into making bullets next to this item by concatenating a bullet character, a space, and the ItemName. Here's what you'll want to enter into the text box:

= Chr(149) & " " & [ItemName]

Don't worry! It looks like mumbo jumbo, but I promise you it'll work. Chr(149) is the code for a bullet character (like this: • ), then it's putting in a space, and finally the ItemName. If the concept of concatenation is foreign to you, I suggest taking a look at this post where I explain concatenation in Excel.

As a sidenote, if you want to just type out that bullet character (in Windows, anyway), all you need to do is type Alt + 0149. Cool, eh?
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Word: Open Documents As Final (Without Reviewing Markup)

The last question I got, a very good one, was from a very frustrated guy who was sick of opening up his Word documents and having them appear with all of his reviewing markup showing (additions, deletions, comments, etc.). He wanted a way for it to automatically show the 'Final' version. And here is a solution for you! But fair warning, if you use this bit of VBA code, it will not immediately be apparent if changes have been tracked in a document and if there are comments and other markups in the file. Why might this be a problem? If you're planning on sending this file on to someone outside of your company, they might be able to see all of the changes you've made as you've been working on the document... which isn't so great. So please, if you use this code... make sure you accept all changes made and remember to delete your comments before sending it off.

Obviously that doesn't apply if you're printing or making a PDF of the document.

Anyway! On to the code. I'm writing this post with the assumption that you know how to add a macro to your "Normal" template in Word. If this sounds foreign to you, I suggest doing a quick Google search and learn a bit about macros and VBA code in Word. Or, if you're patient, you can wait and I'll eventually make a post explaining that stuff.

There are two codes here, as there are two instances when you might want Word to automatically switch the view to 'Final': the first being when you open an existing document, and the second being when you create a new document.

Sub AutoOpen()
'Sets the revisions view to 'Final' when opening a document
With ActiveWindow.View
.ShowRevisionsAndComments = False
.RevisionsView = wdRevisionsViewFinal
End With
End Sub

Sub AutoNew()
'Sets the revisions view to 'Final' when making a new document
With ActiveWindow.View
.ShowRevisionsAndComments = False
.RevisionsView = wdRevisionsViewFinal
End With
End Sub

Happy New Year, my friends! Here's hoping your 2010 is a safe, happy, and healthy year for you all.
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