Sliding fields with borders

[csharpmin]

I have a report that shows a list of people's names and a summary of all their contact info. 2 fields in each row. I have their borders set to left and bottom. When I enable sliding, it creates two problems:

1. blank fields no longer show borders. I've tried adding a line below the two fields and that works fine, but the vertical line I place between the fields doesn't resize when I enable sliding. Is there a way to turn off the feature that makes sliding fields disappear if blank? I could modify the calc to say "None" when blank. I could even make the text "invisible" with conditional formatting.

2. The name field will often resize to a single line while the info field is multiple lines, so the borders don't line up, and it all looks wonky.

I basically want a simple grid that will resize. Any tips?

[Matthew F]

It is annoying how there is no way to easily construct vertical lines that shrink to fit a resized record height in Print Preview mode.

Since fields will resize perhaps you could create a calculated field with white spaces and then give it left or right borders. You would then scatter this across the record to give vertical bars that all resize to the correct height, based on the numbers of rows of text in your 'info' field.

For example you could create a calculated field that would resize based on your 'info field' like this:

Left ( " ¶¶¶¶" ; Ceiling ( (Length ( info ) / ncol)) )

The number of ¶ characters in the calculation would represent the maximum row height, and 'ncol' is a global or calculated field that represents the width (in characters) of your info field. Of course this will only work cleanly if you use a fixed width font.

[csharpmin]

Clever. Thanks.

[bcooney]

There is also Jonathan Stars' recent article on FMAdvisor.com

http://my.advisor.com/doc/19588

but access is subscription-based.