Microsoft Access equivalent to Crystal Field Explorer

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Trying to reverse engineer a report built in Access. I can get at the report and see the fields I want in Design View. but all I see is a field name. How can I determine where that field came from (whether it be a calculated/formatted field, or a straight database field, or whatever)? In Crystal there's a little window called Field Explorer that allows you to see everything at once, and from which you can open any field and see its calculation--what's the equivalent in Access?

Posted 27-Nov-13 7:26am

woopsydoozy

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Maciej Los · Answer 1 · 2013-11-27T07:59:00

Solution 1

Have a look here: Access 2007 Forms and Reports For Dummies[^]

Steps to do:

Open report in design view
Right click on the 'Details' section and choose from right-mouse menu 'Form Properties'
You'll see 'Properties' window

You can view the properties for every control on the form in the same way.

Posted 27-Nov-13 7:59am

Maciej Los

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woopsydoozy 27-Nov-13 14:13pm

I've got 2010, so I don't see anything called a "Details" section. But I can select any field on the report, right click and select Properties, which opens a Property Sheet window. In the ControlSource row there, I can see the name of my data field: CURR_%_POOR_DPMSBSTR_W_ABUT_BSP. Now clearly that's not a DB field, but some field internal to Access. But ultimately, I know that the data used to produce this value comes from the DB. So how do I trace backward to find its actual DB source?

Maciej Los 27-Nov-13 14:22pm

Do you open a report in design view?

woopsydoozy 27-Nov-13 14:24pm

yep

Maciej Los 27-Nov-13 14:47pm

I've got MS Access 2010 polish version. So, sorry if my translation not corresponding to english version. Each MS Access report has got 3 sections: header, details and footer. Details section is main section. Header and Footer section might be visible or not. Please, find 'Form Properties' item on context menu.

woopsydoozy 27-Nov-13 14:53pm

Ah yes, gotcha. But my initial comment still holds. The Report properties show me the name of the Access table, and the properties for any particular field show me the name of the field used to populate that position in the report. But is there a shortcut back to see where the original data from an external DB is coming in? Been googling, and looks like the answer is no--I have to bounce through several steps to try and find the actual source.

Maciej Los 27-Nov-13 15:02pm

I'm afraid you're right. The exact way doesn't exists, unless you know VBA... Using VBA you can list/enumerate all properties into text file.
How to get all properties of report in MS Access[^]

woopsydoozy 27-Nov-13 15:12pm

Thanks, that's a useful link. You can get pretty much the same thing using the Database Documenter on the Database Tools tab, but using VBA, maybe you could drill down through lower level stuff (the Documenter only gives you the level of the report).

Maciej Los 27-Nov-13 15:20pm

Yes, VBA could be powerful tool in this case.