Did you realize that the Reports object returns a collection of all open reports?

Move the OpenReport before the change and make sure you open it in acViewDesign (acDesignView = 1), make your change, then re-open it in acViewNormal (print) or acViewPreview.

A couple of notes:

1. I usually use Win32::OLE::Const "Microsoft Access 8.0"; to import the constants. (Yeah, I'm stuck with Access 97 ;)
2. You can access the report with $access->Reports("Report Name") as well as using the zero-based array subscripts.

HTH...