Hi,
It depends on how much power you want your users to have when getting their reports, but a good way to do this is to create a criteria form - let's say you had a table containing information about people and you want your user to be able to type in a name, click a button and see a report about that person. There are several steps involved here, roughly as follows:
1. Create a form in design view (click Create -> Form Design) and give it a sensible name e.g. frmCriteria.
2. Draw a text box on the form and give it a sensible name e.g. txtCriteria (right-click on the text box and choose Properties, then click on the Other tab to change the Name of the text box). This will be the box that your user will type in the name they are searching for.
3. Save the form and close it down.
4. Create a query in design view (Create -> Query Design), and add the fields you would like to see in the report, including the field that your users will be searching on e.g. PersonName.
5. In the criteria for the PersonName field you need to refer to the value of the text box on the form you have created. If you've been using the same names as I've listed above then in the criteria box you need to type in:
[Forms]![frmCriteria]![txtCriteria]
This will be fine as long as your users are typing in a precise name - so if they type in Smith they will see everyone whose name is exactly Smith. If you want your users to be able to type in a part of a name and see everyone whose name contains that part, your criteria needs to be more like:
Like "*" & [Forms]![frmCriteria]![txtCriteria] & "*"
6. Save the query and close it down.
7. Create a report using the wizard (Create -> Report Wizard) and base it on the query you have just created - don't worry if it doesn't show you any results at this point. Save the report with a sensible name e.g. rptCriteria and close it down.
8. Go back to the form you created earlier and go into design view.
9. Make sure that the Control Wizards are turned on (on the Design tab at the top, make sure the Use Control Wizards button is highlighted), and then draw a command button on the form. The wizard should appear automatically - follow it through to make the button open the report that you created in the previous step.
10. Save everything and then open the form into normal view. Try typing in part of a name and click the button. You should see the report open up and show you records matching the criteria you typed in.
Hopefully that all works! You can add complexity to these criteria forms by adding more text boxes to the form and linking them to criteria in the query in the same way as described above.
Hope that's the sort of thing you were after.