text field footer in report (1 Viewer)

I have a form with attached subform from which I can choose which records to send to a report. All records in the base table have a comment text field for the user to enter additional data (comments). Typically, there are none, but when there is, if it is only a single record sent to the report, the comment is printed in the page footer. However, if there are multiple records being sent to the report and only one record has text in the comment field, unless it's the last record it the subform, it will not print in the report. There isn't enough room in the detail section to include the comment field (like I said, it's typically not used and when it is, they can be lengthy). Is there a way to get the comment field to print in the report page footer when it is not either the only record selected, or the last record?

Others may have a different opinion on this, but to me this sounds like a poor report layout. If there is data specific to a single record, then that data needs to be in the detail section, or if you want to go the extent of grouping on every single record, perhaps in the group footer (I wouldn't do that though.)

Someone here may be able to come up with a clever programmatic way to do what you want, but that won't chnage the fact that the page footer is NOT the place to put data.

You know data in a report doesn't HAVE to be all along one row? I've had similar reports and have laid them out like the attached. I think you ought to give that a go.

Thanks Big Pat. I didn't want to go that route, as it tends to clutter the report. I have attached a sample report where the rows have the same comment, which is placed in the footnote. With this type of data, there are typically either no comments, or all the samples have the same comment. It's just that occaisionally, one sample will have a different comment from the rest. Your example works fine, but it makes all the reports lengthy even when there are no comments. Thanks again, I appreciate the help.

Thanks Big Pat. I didn't want to go that route, as it tends to clutter the report. I have attached a sample report where the rows have the same comment, which is placed in the footnote. With this type of data, there are typically either no comments, or all the samples have the same comment. It's just that occaisionally, one sample will have a different comment from the rest. Your example works fine, but it makes all the reports lengthy even when there are no comments. Thanks again, I appreciate the help.

Sorry Michael, Based on your original question I seriously underestimated your report skills. Looking at that example, you seem to generally know what you're doing!

I'm having a little trouble following what you actually need though. If two samples had different comments, would you have different "indicators" e.g. * and +? And would you want BOTH comments to show in the footer area?

Honestly, I'm just a self-taught (forum-taught!!) hack and probably not the best person to advise you. So I'm going to bow out at this point and hope that someone more experienced will jump in.

But just to get you thinking....
Is there a way to count the number of *'s and +'s on a page? And if so, could you say something like IIF(Count[IndicatorA]>0,[FooterComment]= "xyz","")

That's the only approach that jumps to mind, but I hope someone else can help you.

Good luck!

Pat.