access report multi +column conundrum

I have a multi column report in Access 97 that I need to go down and across, but also needs to be able to grow and span multiple pages. I have this as a nested subreport (a report in subreport, and that report is a subreport in another report, did that make sense?). If I have the report as just a subreport it works fine, but the problom is when I make that report a subreport, it looses the ability to grow to a second page if I set it as down and across. If I reset column layout to across then down it works fine. The main report has 24 .5 inch subreports allowed to grow seperated by page breaks. I believe I need VB code to tell when the column has hit the bottom of the page so it knows to make a second page. Anyone run into this before?