Continued on Page 2 on Report ~ LEARN MS-ACCESS TIPS AND TRICKS

Introduction

Normally, MS-Access reports can span several pages, and it is often useful to display the current page number along with the total number of pages. To achieve this, a TextBox is added to the Page Footer section of the report. In the Control Source property of this TextBox, you can enter an expression like the following:

=”Page: “ & [page] & “ of “ & [pages]

Result: Page 1 of 15

="Page: " & [page] & " / " & [pages]

Result: Page: 1 / 15

Report Date is also added in the page footer area like ="Date: " & format(date(), ”dd/mm/yyyy”)

We often find ourselves repeatedly writing these expressions whenever a new report is designed. If you are a VBA enthusiast, you can automate this process by creating small, reusable User-Defined Functions (UDFs) in your application. By calling the function from a Text Box’s Control Source property, you can quickly insert the required information into your report. I have created two such functions for this purpose—if you’d like to take a look at them, click here.

This approach is especially efficient for developers aiming to standardize functionality across multiple Access applications, much like the concept discussed in your blog post on the MS-Access Reference Library.

Returning to the topic of the page indicator, we aim to display page continuity information in the Report’s Page Footer, but with a slight variation. A report may consist of a single page or multiple pages. When the report spans more than one page, the footer on the first page should display: “Continued on Page 2.”

On subsequent pages (page 2, page 3, etc.), the label should update accordingly—for example, “Continued on Page 3”, and so on—up to the second-to-last page. This label should not appear on the final page. If the report consists of only a single page, the label should be omitted entirely.

Using the first example at the beginning of this article, a single-page report will simply print as “Page 1 of 1.”

Try out the Page Footer Setting

To try our new page labels, open one of your Reports with a few pages.
Create a Text Box, wide enough to display the label, like Continued on Page 99, at the Page Footer of the Report.
Write the following expression in the Control Source Property of the Text Box.
=IIf([Pages]>1 And [Page]<[Pages],"Continued on Page " & [Page]+1,"")
Save the Report and open it in Print Preview.
Check the last page of the Report. This label should not appear there.
Try this out on a single-page Report.