Alphabetical splits in a report

I am working on a database to manage our staff seating, extensions, Office numbers, office wiring, etc. All is working well, and I want to start to combine it with some of the data tracking that they do, such as the office phone listing. In there phone listing the last names are broken into sections like so:
-----------A----------
Andreson, Alice
Anderson, John
Arkin, Lily
----------B-----------
Ballman, jim
....

So for each section I would like a header denoting the first letter of the last name section. I'm guessing I could make another field which had the first letter from each last name (query can do that easy), and group by that, but is there another way done right in the report?

Also would like to (hoping to) have it output in Column form, possibly getting 6 columns across a 11x17 page (landscape). Want to keep it as close to the current format as possible.

Look at this.

http://www.datapigtechnologies.com/f...wocolumns.html

Alan

Ah... An exact tutorial, pretty close to what I was doing. Where I was going wrong (with the columns) is that, and this is going to suck for me, the drawing area defines the column. Using an 11x17 page, I had the work area stretched out to 17", even though my column (area I used in the details part) was only 2.5". Why this sucks is that in the page header there is quite a bit of "Header" info that needs to be there, such as the company logo, some address information, and who to go to for updates. Same goes with the footer, needing other office contact info for the region and local field site numbers...

Is it locked this way, or is there a way around it?

[EDIT : was a bit blind]

Sorry, found it. In the column setup, you can define it to be other than "Same as Detail". So I set it to 2.5" and it allows me to keep the long page header and footer. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!