FORMS DESIGN IN MS ACCESS

[DOMINIC KENBUNGO]

Dear all,

How can I design a form to include 'on screen help' of the 'sample' data expected in a field. Something like this:

 

[Jon]

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[arnelgp]

is this close to what you want?

 

[DOMINIC KENBUNGO]

Ex

is this close to what you want? Exactly. How do we go about it?

 

[isladogs]

@arnelgp has demonstrated one approach involving hidden textboxes which I'll leave him to explain.

Another approach is to use the format property of the fields in the table. See attached
The following quote explains the idea and is taken from my website article: Add Query Colour - Mendip Data Systems.
It is based on comments by fellow AWF member @CJ_London

The last of those (null) is very useful to provide a prompt to the user in a textbox- e.g. "Enter Last Name"
For text strings, there are just 2 sections, not null and null so you use: @;"Enter Last Name"
To get a grey prompt for this example you can set the control forecolor to grey, then the format property could be
[Black]@;"Enter Last Name" to show entered text in black

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

AWF member, MarkK, (I think) demonstrated a very interesting method recently, 2 years ago!

I did a blog and video about it which you can find on my website here:-

Display a Message for the User – Nifty Access

www.niftyaccess.com

 

[theDBguy]

Hi. I have moved your thread out of the Introduction forum.

 

[Mike Krailo]

The method that uses the format property doesn't seem to work in a combo box whereas the method that arnelgp uses does.

 

[isladogs]

The method that uses the format property doesn't seem to work in a combo box whereas the method that arnelgp uses does.

Hmm. Just tested using a combobox with the format method. It works fine for me

 

[Mike Krailo]

I just got bit by the Ooops message again!!!! It did not like that string of code. Using screen shot instead.

In the example database I'm using to test with, I have this:

in the format property of the combo box and it just shows up blank when its a null value. I just checked again and it's blank. Text boxes work fine though.

Colin, do you have a sample database that shows it working with combo boxes? I would like to see it.

 

[isladogs]

I just changed one of the textboxes to a combo in my example app from post #5.
Just added a screenshot to my last reply
Can you try and do what I did. If that doesn't work for you, let me know and I'll upload a modified example later

 

[theDBguy]

I just got bit by the Ooops message again!!!! It did not like that string of code. Using screen shot instead.

In the example database I'm using to test with, I have this:

View attachment 89768

in the format property of the combo box and it just shows up blank when its a null value. I just checked again and it's blank. Text boxes work fine though.

Colin, do you have a sample database that shows it working with combo boxes? I would like to see it.

Just checking, does your Combobox display the first column?

 

[Mike Krailo]

No, first column is not displayed which is why this method doesn't work with combo boxes that do not show the first column. It will work if you show the first column but how many times to we do that?

The other thing I don't like about this particular method is that the items in the drop down box are all grey and you cannot apply separate formatting like centering just the format string and leaving the data left justified after it is typed in. Arnel's method takes care of all of that.

Here is an example of what you can do with the dummy text box method that cannot be done with the format string method:

 

[isladogs]

In the end, as with everything in Access, use whichever method you prefer.

There is no need to set the forecolor to grey if using the format method.
But as you say, that approach won't work if the combo has a hidden first column

 

[Pat Hartman]

You can also use tool tips but they are somewhat limited in size.
I've created a table based solution that works on the click event of a label. The key hear is to standardize the captions so you can use the click event of the label and its Caption property in a dLookup() to retrieve the text that is displayed in a pop up form.