I come across this issue quite often: a
report is needed which always shows the same set of data, plus one of two (or
more) other sets of data depending on the user's choice or the results returned
from the first set of data.
Because a single report can only have one
set of linked tables, multiple sub reports must be used.
For example: a sales report shows revenue
for a particular office, if the office has met its target the managers want to
see how they compare to the rest of the other offices, but if they fail to meet
their target they want to see the sales broken down by each rep to identify any
problem areas.
A report based on sales reps and one based
on nation office sales require completely different tables. The most efficient
way to solve this problem is to create a sub report for each. Whichever is not
needed is suppressed and given Record Selection criteria which will return an
empty report. The required sub report runs as normal.