Attachment Datatype and viewing images in reports (1 Viewer)

Sinfathisar

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Hi All,

I am building a database in Access 2007 that needs currently includes images and excel files as embedded OLEs. I am aware this is not ideal, but I can't change my employer's mind.

I've been looking in to the Attachment data type but am having trouble deciding if it will work as a substitute for my purposes. I know a variety of image file types can be displayed inside Access on forms and reports, but I can't find anything about displaying the contents of an excel sheet. I read something about using Active X controls to display .pdf images - is there anything similar for Excel?

Many thanks
 

JLCantara

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but I can't change my employer's mind: it's time to find another job...
 

vbaInet

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There's nothing better than opening the file in its host application. Is your employer also against this? What I mean is that you can still store the file in Access, but use the host application to open the file.

There's an activex control called MS Office Spreadsheet X.0.
 

jdraw

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What exactly were the instructions given to you?
What is the environment --number of spreadsheets(or whatever)? Number of Users?
Why Access, do you have other Access applications?

Is this basically a catalog of all your Excel files and images?

There are many posts telling you to avoid OLE and attachments because of possible bloat. But you know your parameters better than we do.
Good luck.
 

vbaInet

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The fairly new Attachment datatype is supposed to be much better compressed than the old OLE datatype, and as a result reduces (not eliminates) the chance of bloating. Perhaps you can explain this to your boss and see what s/he says.
 

Sinfathisar

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I am interested in approaching the employer with the idea of Attachements as a work around, but I NEED to be able to display the contents of a spreadsheet as a graphic on an Access report that will be printed on paper and handed over to the government (CORPS).

If I can't find any info on doing this (no luck so far) - then its not worth bringing up to the boss.

It is basically a catalog of spreadsheets and images (flexibility on image type). There will be two spreadsheets and one image per record. File size is small, contents of each will fit nicely displayed on standard printer paper.

3-4 users utilizing an .mdb BE with Master/Replica.

Must be Access - we are a small business spending more money than was bid for the database development phase of this project already, and the developers (myself) are not programmers/db developers by trade.

I actually quite enjoy my job :)
 

vbaInet

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Is it only the spreadsheet that will be included in the report? Tell your boss that it's just not feasible. A spreadsheet spans much wider than an Access report. The spreadsheet can and should be opened in Excel.
 

Sinfathisar

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No, the report includes additional data from other tables linked by ID to the spreadsheets.

We have an older set up that displays excel sheets as OLE objects and we got them to fit/display nicely on a regular piece of paper by formatting the excel sheet page size with a stand alone macro.
 

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