Hi Charlene,
I don' t know if I totally understand your question, but I will take a stab
anyway and apologies ahead of time if I misunderstand.
I think the issue you are describing is that you have a form where you want
to track the responses in a database. On the form you ask your two example
questions"Where did injury occur?" and "How did injury occur?", so I assume
you have two text fields in the table "injury_where_descr" and
"injury_how_descr".
The problem is that you have to process paperwork parallel with this data,
and sometimes the answer can be empty or brief and sometimes the answer can
be lengthy ("I tripped" vs. "I was attending my brother's funeral in
Bethesda Maryland and I was coming down the stairs of the funeral
chapel...."
My hunch would be to separate the data entry layout from the layout that
produces the paperwork. Of course, you make the two as visually close to any
paper form you may have, but for each question only the Entry Layout you
allow a nice large text-area style field, and then have a Print Layout that
looks very similar, but instead of entry fields you use Merge fields, that
way the text naturally compacts up for short answers and expands for long
answers. Similarly, if you need to run a report, then if you use Merge
fields then you can set the text block containing the merged data to Slide
Up and Reduce Containing part -- thus, give LOTS of extra space for the part
knowing that when the answer is "I tripped" the row in the list is only 1
line wide. Unfortunately, the merge data does take at least 1 line on a
list, and if you try to embed text in a string and the data is empty you
will end up with two spaces (and there are ways to deal with that too, but
it involves calculations and merge fields...).
Hope that helps even a little.
Brad
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 4:23 PM, Flora, Charlene <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Good Afternoon,
>
> I have a text equation that contains text size, text font, case statements,
> etc. that make up a form. There are two fields for this form that will hold
> data. I would like the two fields to be side by side underneath the
> questions pertaining to the fields.
>
> How do I write a specific field size (ex: 2" x 2") for each field that will
> also include the statement IsEmpty for these fields; the second field, if
> empty, will have several returns before the next sentence begins on the
> form.
>
> Example:
>
> Where did injury occur? How did injury occur?
>
> (fields without borders having data)
>
> If I cannot do columns in the form, please let me know.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Charlene Flora
>
>
>
> Database Developer
>
> Division of Athletic Training/Sports Medicine
>
> Intercollegiate Athletics
>
> The University of Texas at Austin
>
> P. O. Box 7399
>
> Austin, TX 78713-7399
>
>
>
> 512/658-2257
>
>
>
--
Sincerely,
Brad
