Compare design of two reports (1 Viewer)

Ran a report that contains a subreport. Was proofreading the output and noticed that the subreport was truncating. I looked at a report that was saved last month in PDF and it did not have truncation, so I imported the subreport from a backup of last month's file and all was well again. The concern I have is I don't recall if there were any design changes to the report between last month and this month, or what other issue would have caused the truncation effect, (was it corruption without error message or crash)? I tried to visually compare the two reports and they appear the same, it is not a code issue as there is no vba behind the report. The sql statement is identical and the Sorting and Grouping look identical as well as the number of text boxes. I found a program on the web that can locate differences and it found some, but because the differences were not vba, I couldn't decipher what/where the differences are because they were in hex or some other numeric notation. (sample attached). For now I'll go with the older version of the subreport, just wanted to put this out there in case anyone has another thought on comparing or what may have happened to cause truncation between last month and this month.

The concern I have is I don't recall if there were any design changes to the report between last month and this month

Click to expand...

learn a well known and effective developer methodology - take backups before any changes, document your code where changes are made and keep a detailed log of changes - who, when, why, what, where

You can use the access database documenter to run a report on each report - generally easier to compare side by side

learn a well known and effective developer methodology - take backups before any changes, document your code where changes are made and keep a detailed log of changes - who, when, why, what, where

Click to expand...

To clarify:
I back up each file that I use at least once a day (before I open the file) regardless of whether I make changes, just in case something happens - that is how I found the earlier report.

I document changes in vba, just haven't figured out the best way for me to document non vba changes such as moving or adding a textbox to a report and determining how often/significant a change should qualify for such documentation since some changes such as moving a text box over a quarter inch or changing point size from 9 to 8. Otherwise end up spending too much time on putting together a list of too many changes. Then also the issue of documenting inside the file as a table or outside in a text or excel file.

Thanks:
for mentioning the database documenter. I'll take a look and see if that sheds any light. I think the report in question is ok from standpoint of not being changed as it is a fairly simple report having only two text boxes.

I use a version table for front end updating, and one field is for the changes made to that version. That said, for the things you describe I'd just say "tweak such-and-such report", not detail each little change. I would know that I made changes to it though, so if something went horribly wrong I could pull a copy of the form/report from a backup.