Microsoft Access 2010 : Report

Convert hexadecimal color codes so you can use them in code

cdowns — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:14:08 GMT

Today's guest blogger is Michael Merlin, Lead Software Developer at Electronic Communities.

I recently wasted an hour trying to set a field's Back Color property to the hex code generated by the color picker. I figured it out after some searching, but still nobody online had the exact correct answer. I wrote a function that lets you easily use the hex color in code. The secret is to swap the R and the B, and then convert the hex to long. Further explanation follows in the comments of the function.

Cheers!
Michael

Public Function HexColor(strHex As String) As Long

    'converts Hex string to long number, for colors
    'the leading # is optional

    'example usage
    'Me.iSupplier.BackColor = HexColor("FCA951")
    'Me.iSupplier.BackColor = HexColor("#FCA951")

    'the reason for this function is to programmatically use the
    'Hex colors generated by the color picker.
    'The trick is, you need to reverse the first and last hex of the
    'R G B combination and convert to Long
    'so that if the color picker gives you this color #FCA951
    'to set this in code, we need to return CLng(&H51A9FC)
    
    Dim strColor As String
    Dim strR As String
    Dim strG As String
    Dim strB As String
    
    'strip the leading # if it exists
    If Left(strHex, 1) = "#" Then
        strHex = Right(strHex, Len(strHex) - 1)
    End If
    
    'reverse the first two and last two hex numbers of the R G B values
    strR = Left(strHex, 2)
    strG = Mid(strHex, 3, 2)
    strB = Right(strHex, 2)
    strColor = strB & strG & strR
    HexColor = CLng("&H" & strColor)

End Function

Free report wizard offer from Gladstone

Clint Covington — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:28:59 GMT

Mike Hnatt has generously extended to the Access blog readers a FREE version of Gladstone’s Access Report Writer. Traditionally, he has sold the developer version of the wizard for $995. The offer includes unlimited computer licenses, ability to change report header and page footers, source code, and royalty-free distribution for your application. One of the best things about the wizard is it is re-entrant. You can learn more about the report wizard here.

Here are a few screen shots:

Sample report:

This is his way to say ‘thanks’ to the Access community. I want to say THANKS back to Mike for the generous offer to the community!

(Updated post with wizard images 7/5/09)

Check out Gladstone's Report Writer for Microsoft Access

cdowns — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:56:28 GMT

Mike Hnatt at Gladstone Solutions has a nifty Report Writer utility, available at http://gladstonesolutions.com/default.aspx. The utility lets you create reports and mailing labels quickly and easily, just by stepping through a few wizard-like screens.

What’s more, Mike is offering a 25% discount through August 31, 2009 for blog readers. When ordering, just type Access Team Blog in the Please tell us how you found out about us box on the order form.

How to: Create a Shortcut Menu for a Form, Form Control, or Report

Mike Stowe — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Today’s guest blogger is Edwin Blancovitch. Edwin is president of Advanced Developers.net, creators of Easy Payroll, a software package to manage your human resources, payroll, scheduling, time and attendance needs.

When you're designing a form or report, you may want to provide a method for a user to easily use a command that applies only to the correct context. One way to do this is to create a custom shortcut menu and apply it to a form report, or control. The shortcut menu appears when the user right-clicks the object to which the shortcut menu is applied.

In earlier versions of Access, you could use the Customize dialog box to create custom shortcut menus. In Microsoft Office Access 2007, you must use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code to create a shortcut menu. This article shows you how to create a shortcut menu using VBA.

To create a shortcut menu, you first have to create a CommandBar object. The CommandBar object represents the shortcut menu. Then, you use the Add method to create CommandBarControl objects. Each time you create a CommandBarControl object, a command is added to the shortcut menu.

Example 1: A Simple Shortcut Menu

The following example creates a shortcut menu named SimpleShortcutMenu that contains two commands, Remove Filter/Sort and Filter by Selection.

Note To use the following examples, you must set a reference to the Microsoft Office 12.0 Object Library. See Set References to Type Libraries for more information about setting references.

Sub CreateSimpleShortcutMenu()
    Dim cmbShortcutMenu As Office.CommandBar
    
    ' Create a shortcut menu named "SimpleShortcutMenu".
    Set cmbShortcutMenu = CommandBars.Add("SimpleShortcutMenu", _
                        msoBarPopup, False, False)
                        
    ' Add the Remove Filter/Sort command.
    cmbShortcutMenu.Controls.Add Type:=msoControlButton, Id:=605
    
    ' Add the Filter By Selection command.
    cmbShortcutMenu.Controls.Add Type:=msoControlButton, Id:=640
    
    Set cmbShortcutMenu = Nothing
End Sub

Once you've run the code, the shortcut menu is saved as part of the database. You don't have to run the same code to recreate the shortcut menu each time you open the database.

To assign the shortcut menu to a form, form control, or report, set Shortcut Menu property of the object to Yes and set the Shortcut Menu Bar property of the object to the name of the shortcut menu. For this example, set the Shortcut Menu Bar property to SimpleShortcutMenu.

Note In some instances, you may want to create a temporary CommandBar. To do this, set the Temporary argument of the Add method to True. When you do this, the CommandBar is deleted when Access is closed.

Example 2: A Shortcut Menu With Grouping

The following example creates a shortcut menu named cmdFormFiltering that contains commands that are useful to use with Continuous forms. In this example, the BeginGroup property is used on several controls to group controls visually.

Sub CreateShortcutMenuWithGroups()
    Dim cmbRightClick As Office.CommandBar
    
    ' Create the shortcut menu.
    Set cmbRightClick = CommandBars.Add("cmdFormFiltering", _
                      msoBarPopup, False, False)
    
    With cmbRightClick
        ' Add the Find command.
        .Controls.Add msoControlButton, 141
        
        ' Start a new grouping and add the Sort Ascending command.
        .Controls.Add(msoControlButton, 210).BeginGroup = True
        
        ' Add the Sort Descending command.
        .Controls.Add msoControlButton, 211
        
        ' Start a new grouping and add the Remove Filer/Sort command.
        .Controls.Add(msoControlButton, 605).BeginGroup = True
        
        ' Add the Filter by Selection command.
        .Controls.Add msoControlButton, 640
        
        ' Add the Filter Excluding Selection command.
        .Controls.Add msoControlButton, 3017
        
        ' Add the Between... command.
        .Controls.Add msoControlButton, 10062
    End With
End Sub

Example 3: A Shortcut Menu for Reports

The following example creates a shortcut menu named cmdReportRightClick that contains commands that are useful to use with a report. This example illustrates how to change the Caption property of each control as they're added to the shortcut menu.

Sub CreateReportShortcutMenu()
    Dim cmbRightClick As Office.CommandBar
    Dim cmbControl As Office.CommandBarControl

    Set cmbRightClick = CommandBars.Add("cmdReportsRightClick", _
                                        msoBarPopup, False, False)

    With cmbRightClick
        
        ' Add the Print command.
        Set cmbControl = .Controls.Add(msoControlButton, 2521)
        ' Change the caption displayed for the control.
        cmbControl.Caption = "Quick Print"
        
        ' Add the Print command.
        Set cmbControl = .Controls.Add(msoControlButton, 15948)
        ' Change the caption displayed for the control.
        cmbControl.Caption = "Select Pages"
        
        ' Add the Page Setup... command.
        Set cmbControl = .Controls.Add(msoControlButton, 247)
        ' Change the caption displayed for the control.
        cmbControl.Caption = "Page Setup"
        
        ' Add the Mail Recipient (as Attachment)... command.
        Set cmbControl = .Controls.Add(msoControlButton, 2188)
        ' Start a new group.
        cmbControl.BeginGroup = True
        ' Change the caption displayed for the control.
        cmbControl.Caption = "Email Report as an Attachment"
        
        ' Add the PDF or XPS command.
        Set cmbControl = .Controls.Add(msoControlButton, 12499)
        ' Change the caption displayed for the control.
        cmbControl.Caption = "Save as PDF/XPS"
        
        ' Add the Close command.
        Set cmbControl = .Controls.Add(msoControlButton, 923)
        ' Start a new group.
        cmbControl.BeginGroup = True
        ' Change the caption displayed for the control.
        cmbControl.Caption = "Close Report"
    End With
    
    Set cmbControl = Nothing
    Set cmbRightClick = Nothing
End Sub

Displaying the Shortcut Menu

By default, a shortcut menu is displayed when the user right-clicks the object that the shortcut menu is assigned to. The problem is, many users do not know that right-clicking their mouse can display a menu.

You can use the ShowPopup method to display a shortcut menu when the user clicks on an object. The following example shows how to display the cmdFormFiltering shortcut menu when the user clicks the Command0 button.

Private Sub Command0_Click()
    
    ' Display the shortcut menu when the user clicks the button.
    Application.CommandBars("cmdFormFiltering").ShowPopup
    
End Sub

How to Discover the IDs to Use

In the previous examples, a numeric ID was used to specify the control to the Add method. How do you find the ID to use for the control that you want to add? Access doesn’t provide a built-in method that you can use to find right ID to use.

The following example shows how to find the right ID to use. The CreateCommandBarsWithIDs function uses cbShowButtonFaceIds function to create four CommandBars, each with 500 controls.

The CommandBars are displayed on the Add-Ins tab of the Ribbon. The number displayed beside each icon is the ID to use when adding the control to a shortcut menu.

Function CreateCommandBarsWithIDs()
    Call cbShowButtonFaceIds("CmdIDs_01", 1, 500)
    Call cbShowButtonFaceIds("CmdIDs_02", 501, 1000)
    Call cbShowButtonFaceIds("CmdIDs_03", 1001, 1500)
    Call cbShowButtonFaceIds("CmdIDs_04", 1501, 2000)
End Function

Function cbShowButtonFaceIds(strName As String, _
                             lngIDStart As Long, _
                             lngIDStop As Long)

    Dim cbrNewToolBar As CommandBar
    Dim cmdNewButton As CommandBarButton
    Dim intCntr As Integer

    On Error Resume Next

    ' Delete the CommandBar if it already exists.
    Application.CommandBars(strName).Delete

    ' Create the CommandBar.
    Set cbrNewToolBar = Application.CommandBars.Add( _
                      Name:=strName, temporary:=True)

    ' Loop through the IDs.
    For intCntr = lngIDStart To lngIDStop
        ' Create a new button for each ID.
        Set cmdNewButton = cbrNewToolBar.Controls.Add( _
                         Type:=msoControlButton)

        With cmdNewButton
            .FaceId = intCntr
            .TooltipText = "Faceid= " & intCntr
            .Caption = intCntr
            .Style = msoButtonIconAndCaptionBelow
        End With

        ' This takes awhile to run. Display a count
        ' to indicate progress.
        Debug.Print intCntr & " of " & lngIDStop
    Next intCntr

    ' Display the new CommandBar.
    With cbrNewToolBar
        .Width = 600
        .Left = 100
        .Top = 200
        .Visible = True
    End With

    Set cbrNewToolBar = Nothing
    Set cmdNewButton = Nothing
End Function

Roll-your-own “traffic light” icon set

accblog — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:07:05 GMT

Posted by Chris Downs, writer, Access IW Content Team

Here’s a great tip suggested by Clint Covington. Using an expression and a Rich Text text box, you can create a traffic light indicator in an Access form or report, as in the following illustrations:

First, add a text box to the form or report, and set the following properties:

Property	Setting
Text Format	Rich Text
Locked	True
Enabled	False

Then, enter the following expression into the Control Source property:

="<font face=Webdings size=1 color=" & IIf([Status]="Active","#ED1C24", IIf([Status]="Resolved","#FFF20C", IIf([Status]="Closed","#22B14C"))) & ">n </font>"

Edit the items in bold text so that they refer to field names and values in your database.

This expression creates an HTML string that the Rich Text text box can interpret. In short, it specifies the letter “n”, which in the Webdings font corresponds to the circular icon. The IIf functions set the icon’s color to red, yellow, or green, respectively. You can nest more IIf statements together to accommodate more values—check out this color reference to obtain the Hex values of more varied colors.

Note: Instead of entering the expression in the Control Source property of the text box, you can also create a calculated field in a query, and then bind the text box to that field. For example, in the Field row of the query design grid, enter:

StatusLight: "<font face=Webdings size=1 color=" & IIf([Status]="Active","#ED1C24", IIf([Status]="Resolved","#FFF20C", IIf([Status]="Closed","#22B14C"))) & ">n </font>"

And then bind the Rich Text text box to the StatusLight field.

Video demo of conditional formatting in reports

Clint Covington — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:12:54 GMT

The video Watch this: Highlight values on a report by using conditional formatting is now live on Office Online.

Enjoy!

Edited: October 31, 2008--updated link with correct URL.

Label saver utility

Clint Covington — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:29:49 GMT

Peter's Software has recently released a free utility for printing labels. Here is how they describe it:

Label Saver is a freeware MS Access module that will allow your users to specify a label printing start position and a number of copies of each label to print. Using Label Saver means you don't have to throw out that half-used sheet of labels. Just continue printing from the next available label!

Dot or Bang?

robcooper — Sat, 31 May 2008 03:39:40 GMT

Here's a question that comes up from time to time. The other day, someone internally asked about the difference between using a dot "." vs. a bang "!" for control references in a form in VBA. In other words, given a form - Form1, with a control - Control1, what are the differences between:

Form1.Control1 ' Control reference using a dot

- and -

Form1!Control1 ' Control reference using a bang

Michael Kaplan was kind enough to respond with the following:

The dot gives you early binding and is resolved at compile time, the bang is resolved at runtime.
In the case of Forms, both controls and fields in the underlying query can be referenced via a dot since they are all in the type library for the form.
Also in the case of Forms, if you change the underlying query at runtime - dot references to the old query's fields will fail at runtime since update of the Form's type library cannot happen at runtime.
Because the dot is early bound, IntelliSense happens by default with the dot, not with the bang.
The dot (since it is early bound) is faster than the bang, but no one runs enough code that uses these items enough for the performance difference to actually matter.

Thanks Michael for responding!

Code to make dates easier to read

Clint Covington — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 07:19:00 GMT

Today's author: Kerry Westphal, a program manager who works on the Access team.

I like how many web 2.0 applications make it very easy to visualize complex data quickly. I found myself recently challenged with this task while working on a project where I wanted to display on a report an easy way to show the time elapsed between the current date and another date. Example scenarios how long it’s been since a user profile has been updated, the time left until taxes are due or how long a library book has been checked out. I didn’t just want to show the hours or even days elapsed, but something more in sync with the way I want the information given to me- specifically that when dates are closer to the current time they are represented more precisely and dates that are farther away are shown generically. I checked out Sal Ricciardi’s article On Time and how much has elapsed to get me started on this work.

By extending his functions I found just what I was looking for. I wrote the ElapsedDays function along with some helper functions to accomplish this task. The function can be used in a query to obtain a string representation of the time elapsed. The string returned is specific or general based on the time elapsed. For example, if the date is very close to the current date, it would say something like “In 12 hours, 27 minutes”. But if the date was sometime much longer ago, it would return something more general like, “Over a year ago”. Here is an example where I used the ElapsedDays function to keep track of items in my calendar:

Here is the code. Feel free to use it in your applications to help read dates faster with more clarity.

Public Function ElapsedDays(dateTimeStart As Date) _

As String

'*************************************************************

' Function ElapsedDays(dateTimeStart As Date) As String

' Returns the time elapsed from today in a friendly string like,

' "A day ago"

'*************************************************************

Dim interval As Double, days As Variant

If IsNull(dateTimeStart) = True Then Exit Function

days = dateTimeStart - Now()

Dim leapYearNow

Dim leapYearBefore

If WhenLeapYear() = 1 Then

leapYearNow = 366

leapYearBefore = 365

Else:

If WhenLeapYear() = 2 Then

leapYearNow = 365

leapYearBefore = 366

Else

leapYearNow = 365

leapYearBefore = 365

End If

Select Case days

Case Is < -leapYearBefore

ElapsedDays = "Over a year ago"

Case -leapYearBefore To -MonthTime(5) + -MonthTime(4)

ElapsedDays = "In the last year"

Case -MonthTime(5) + -MonthTime(4) To -MonthTime(4)

ElapsedDays = "Over a month ago"

Case -MonthTime(4) To -28

ElapsedDays = "Over four weeks ago"

Case -28 To -21

ElapsedDays = "Over three weeks ago"

Case -21 To -13

ElapsedDays = "Over two weeks ago"

Case -13 To -7

ElapsedDays = "Over a week ago"

Case -7 To -6

ElapsedDays = "Over six days ago"

Case -6 To -5

ElapsedDays = "Over five days ago"

Case -5 To -4

ElapsedDays = "Over four days ago"

Case -4 To -3

ElapsedDays = "Over three days ago"

Case -3 To -2

ElapsedDays = "Over two days ago"

Case -2 To -1

ElapsedDays = "Over a day ago"

Case -1 To 0

ElapsedDays = ElapsedTimeString(dateTimeStart) & " ago"

Case 0 To 1

ElapsedDays = "In " & ElapsedTimeString(dateTimeStart)

Case 1 To 2

ElapsedDays = "In over one day"

Case 2 To 3

ElapsedDays = "In over two days"

Case 3 To 4

ElapsedDays = "In over three days"

Case 4 To 5

ElapsedDays = "In over four days"

Case 5 To 6

ElapsedDays = "In over five days"

Case 6 To 7

ElapsedDays = "In over six days"

Case 7 To 14

ElapsedDays = "In over a week"

Case 14 To 21

ElapsedDays = "In over two weeks"

Case 21 To 28

ElapsedDays = "In over three weeks"

Case 28 To MonthTime(1)

ElapsedDays = "In over four weeks"

Case MonthTime(1) To MonthTime(2) + MonthTime(1)

ElapsedDays = "In over a month"

Case MonthTime(2) + MonthTime(1) To MonthTime(3) + MonthTime(2) + MonthTime(1)

ElapsedDays = "In over two months"

Case MonthTime(3) + MonthTime(2) + MonthTime(1) To leapYearNow

ElapsedDays = "In less than a year"

Case Is > leapYearNow

ElapsedDays = "In over a year"

End Select

If ElapsedDays = "0 ago" Or ElapsedDays = "In 0" Then ElapsedDays = "Now"

End Function

Public Function IsLeapYear()

Dim leap As Variant

leap = DatePart("yyyy", Now())

If (leap Mod 4 = 0) And ((leap Mod 100 <> 0) Or (leap Mod 400 = 0)) Then IsLeapYear = 29 Else IsLeapYear = 28

End Function

Public Function WhenLeapYear()

Dim leap As Variant

leap = DatePart("yyyy", Now())

If (leap Mod 4 = 0) And ((leap Mod 100 <> 0) Or (leap Mod 400 = 0)) Then

WhenLeapYear = 1

Exit Function

Else

leap = leap - 1

If (leap Mod 4 = 0) And ((leap Mod 100 <> 0) Or (leap Mod 400 = 0)) Then

WhenLeapYear = 2

Exit Function

Else:

WhenLeapYear = 3

End If

End Function

Public Function MonthTime() _

As Variant

Dim month As Variant

Dim MonthTime1(5) As Variant

month = DatePart("m", Now())

Select Case month

Case 1 'January

MonthTime1(1) = 31 'January

MonthTime1(2) = IsLeapYear() 'February

MonthTime1(3) = 31 'March

MonthTime1(4) = 31 'December

MonthTime1(5) = 30 'November

Case 2 ' February

MonthTime1(1) = IsLeapYear() 'February

MonthTime1(2) = 31 'March

MonthTime1(3) = 30 'April

MonthTime1(4) = 31 'January

MonthTime1(5) = 31 'December

Case 3 'March

MonthTime1(1) = 31 'March

MonthTime1(2) = 30 'April

MonthTime1(3) = 31 'May

MonthTime1(4) = IsLeapYear() ' February

MonthTime1(5) = 31 'January

Case 4 'April

MonthTime1(1) = 30 'April

MonthTime1(2) = 31 'May

MonthTime1(3) = 30 'June

MonthTime1(4) = 31 'March

MonthTime1(5) = IsLeapYear() ' February

Case 5 'May

MonthTime1(1) = 31 'May

MonthTime1(2) = 30 'June

MonthTime1(3) = 31 'July

MonthTime1(4) = 30 'April

MonthTime1(5) = 31 'March

Case 6 'June

MonthTime1(1) = 30 'June

MonthTime1(2) = 31 'July

MonthTime1(3) = 31 'August

MonthTime1(4) = 31 'May

MonthTime1(5) = 30 'April

Case 7 'July

MonthTime1(1) = 31 'July

MonthTime1(2) = 31 'August

MonthTime1(3) = 30 'September

MonthTime1(4) = 30 'June

MonthTime1(5) = 31 'May

Case 8 'August

MonthTime1(1) = 30 'August

MonthTime1(2) = 31 'September

MonthTime1(3) = 31 'October

MonthTime1(4) = 31 'July

MonthTime1(5) = 30 'June

Case 9 'September

MonthTime1(1) = 31 'September

MonthTime1(2) = 31 'October

MonthTime1(3) = 30 'November

MonthTime1(4) = 30 'August

MonthTime1(5) = 31 'July

Case 10 'October

MonthTime1(1) = 31 'October

MonthTime1(2) = 30 'November

MonthTime1(3) = 31 'December

MonthTime1(4) = 31 'September

MonthTime1(5) = 30 'August

Case 11 'November

MonthTime1(1) = 30 'November

MonthTime1(2) = 31 'December

MonthTime1(3) = 31 'January

MonthTime1(4) = 31 'October

MonthTime1(5) = 31 'September

Case 12 'December

MonthTime1(1) = 31 'December

MonthTime1(2) = 31 'January

MonthTime1(3) = IsLeapYear() 'February

MonthTime1(4) = 30 'November

MonthTime1(5) = 31 'October

End Select

MonthTime = MonthTime1

End Function

Public Function ElapsedTimeString(dateTimeStart As Date) _

As String

'*************************************************************

' Function ElapsedTimeString(dateTimeStart As Date,

' dateTimeEnd As Date) As String

' Returns the time elapsed between a starting Date/Time and

' an ending Date/Time formatted as a string that looks like

' this:

' "20 hours, 30 minutes".

'*************************************************************

Dim interval As Double, str As String, days As Variant

Dim hours As String, minutes As String, seconds As String

If IsNull(dateTimeStart) = True Then Exit Function

interval = Now() - dateTimeStart

hours = Format(interval, "h")

minutes = Format(interval, "n")

' Hours part of the string

str = str & IIf(hours = "0", "", _

IIf(hours = "1", hours & " hour", hours & " hours"))

str = str & IIf(hours = "0", "", _

IIf(minutes <> "0", ", ", " "))

' Minutes part of the string

str = str & IIf(minutes = "0", "", _

IIf(minutes = "1", minutes & " minute", _

minutes & " minutes"))

ElapsedTimeString = IIf(str = "", "0", str)

End Function

Four new video demos about reports

Clint Covington — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:40:13 GMT

The Office Online writers for Access have recently produced four cool video demos about designing reports. The effort should help the topic Modify a report become much easier for people to understand.

Tips and tricks designing forms and reports

Clint Covington — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:02:44 GMT

This is the final post of a three part series on Access Tips and Tricks provided by members of the Access team. It was originally posted on my blog but I'm reposting here for the benefit of the broader audience.

Custom AutoFormats

You can create a custom AutoFormat based on the current form. This was useful to me when I was customizing a template and didn’t want it to look exactly like the ones out of the box. With your form or report in Layout or Design views, under the Format contextual tab, drop down the list of AutoFormats and choose AutoFormat Wizard… Then click on Customize and choose “Create a new AutoFormat based on the form ‘Current’.” It requires some effort to get it exactly right, but what I did was make a form that had all the elements I might need (logo, title, labels, text boxes, etc.) and create the AutoFormat based on that, then apply it to all the other forms/reports. –Abigail (form and report developer)

Layouts

I’m a big fan of layouts and anchoring for creating forms that use the available real estate. However, it gets really annoying when a layout tries to suck in a control as it gets close to the layout. Why doesn’t Access read my mind and know that I didn’t intend for that control to go into the layout? Grrr!!! We tried to implement the “read my mind” feature but didn’t get very far!

As you drag controls near stacks, hold the CTRL key to keep fields from being sucked into stacks. This makes it possible to put red stars next to text boxes or move boxes behind controls to provide visual separation.

Another tip—you might notice all buttons in command bars are in stacks. We put them into stacks so that they would resize correctly in localized builds at instantiation time. Feel free to get rid of the stack—it doesn’t provide any functional value once the template is opened.

One last command I found really helpful when designing reports--on the right click menu for a control in layout and design mode there is the Layout | Move Up a Section and Move Down a Section. I have found this more useful than I expected when you are experimenting with different groupings.

Truncated Numbers

Ever had someone make a bad decision because a number was truncated? There is a new property called “Check for truncated number fields.” When this option is enabled, numbers appear as "#####" when the column is too narrow to display the entire value. When this option is not enabled, you see only part of the values in a column.

Transparent Images and Smaller Databases

If you have an existing mdb database, you know that adding images dramatically increase the size of the database. You also know that the images don’t preserve transparency. You set the option in the Access Options | Current Database. Here is what the help file says about preserver image format:

Preserve source image format (smaller file size) When this option is selected, Access stores images in their original format. Select this option to reduce database size.
Convert all picture data to bitmaps (compatible with Access 2003 and earlier) When this option is selected, Access creates a copy of the original image file in either the Windows Bitmap or Device Independent Bitmap formats. Select this option to view images in databases created in Office Access 2003 and earlier.

Binding Images to External Files

It is a royal pain to bind the image control to external files. The code is messy and sometimes the JPG filter doesn’t work correctly. Fortunately, late in the development cycle Brian made it possible to set the control source on image controls to UNC paths. Give it a try—create a text field that contains UNC paths to pictures in your favorite image library. Drop the image control on a form give it a run.

Easy Database Lockdown

If you are looking for a simple way to share a database with co-workers and you don’t want them messing around with things… Try renaming the file to ACCDR. This is the equivalent of running the database with the /runtime switch. Basically the ribbon and nav pane get turned off.

Save Embedded Macros as VBA

Access 2007 introduces a new type of macros called embedded macros. Embedded macros are macros that are stored on an event instead of as a separate object. Embedded macros support name fix-up and are used extensively through-out our templates. They are largely targeted to information workers that don’t write code but useful for developers that are trying to perform some simple actions.

I admit some types of macros are easier to maintain as code for developers. Thanks to a late DCR it is possible to convert all the macros in a form or report to VBA. Open the object in design view and Go to the Database Tools tab. Click on the Convert Form’s Macros to Visual Basic.

Hyperlinks and Hand on Hover for Buttons

Hyperlinks have a new Display as Hyperlink property that doesn’t munge # signs. It also prints hyperlinks as black text instead of blue underlies. Also, buttons have some new cool properties including transparent and a hand on hover property. (Abigail – Form and report developer)

Developer Help

End user and developer help is separated out so that end users don’t get confused with developer topics and developers don’t get bored with end user’s topics. You can easily switch between the two with the search dropdown.

Another previous post that might be interesting to you was my post Ideas about great looking reports.

Using Hyperlinks in Access: Display As Hyperlink and Is Hyperlink

Steven Greenberg — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:47:10 GMT

Those of you transitioning to Access 2007 from earlier versions of the product may notice the addition of a new property on the TextBox and ComboBox controls: Display As Hyperlink. You may wonder how this new property interacts with the existing Is Hyperlink property. I asked that question myself and found that the available documentation left some of my questions unanswered. So I’m writing this blog post to hopefully fill that void.

First of all, if you’re happy with pre-Access 2007 behavior, just keep Display As Hyperlink set to its default value, “If Hyperlink”.

The key point about Display As Hyperlink is this: You’ll want to change Display As Hyperlink to “Always” if you want a combo box or text box to appear like a hyperlink even though it’s actually tied to a text field not a hyperlink field. By doing this, you can leverage your users’ familiarity with the hyperlink look and feel and encourage them to click on a field in order to trigger some action.
You’ll see examples of this technique throughout the Access 2007 templates. For instance, take a look at the ID field in the Contact List form in the Contacts template. Clicking on the ID field drills through to the Contact Details form for the specified row.

Setting Display As Hyperlink causes the text in the ComboBox or TextBox to be colored blue and underlined. (Note that the hyperlink color doesn’t have to be blue. It can be customized by clicking the Office button, going to the Advanced tab and clicking Web Options.) Additionally, when hovering over the control, the cursor turns from a pointer into a Hyperlink Hand.

In the past, folks might have accomplished these goals by just setting Is Hyperlink to “Yes”. But there are three subtle problems with this approach. One problem is that setting Is Hyperlink to “Yes” does not make the control’s OnClick event keyboard-accessible. But setting Display As Hyperlink to “Always” means that when the user tabs to the control and hits the Enter key, any macros tied to an OnClick event will be run.

The second problem with setting Is Hyperlink to “Yes” is that it causes the control to be editable as if it’s a hyperlink. So you can right click on the control and select “Edit Hyperlink”. This doesn’t make sense when the field is not actually the hyperlink data type, and can lead to undesirable results.

The third problem with setting Is Hyperlink to “Yes” is that it causes the text of the control to be parsed as if its datatype is "hyperlink". The hyperlink datatype in Access makes it possible for a single field to store and edit the display text, address, sub-address and tooltip for a hyperlink.This is done by storing the four values together in a single line of text with the values separated by hash signs. Specifically, the syntax is: DisplayText#Address#SubAddress#Tooltip. Putting aside the tooltip and sub address for the sake of example, when you set a hyperlink field to Microsoft’s web site, that value is stored in the database as “Microsoft’s Website#http://www.microsoft.com##”.

So if you were unfortunate enough to set Is Hyperlink to “Yes” on a field with values that have # signs in them, no text after the # sign would get displayed to the user. The user might enter “200 Main Street, Apartment # 23”. But when they looked back at the form, they would only see “200 Main Street Apartment”. Setting Display As Hyperlink to “Always” does not cause the text of the field to be interpreted as an encoded hyperlink.

One final note: There’s an additional third option for Display As Hyperlink: “Screen Only”. This is a great option to use when building the kinds of interactive reports which are now possible with Access 2007. You want the field to show up as a hyperlink on the screen, but when the report is printed out, there’s no need to show the text as blue and underlined.
I hope this can help you understand a new property in Access 2007 that can be a bit confusing at first sight.

Steven

Color Support in Access 2007

Zac Woodall — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:50:00 GMT

This is the next installment in a series of posts about Access 2007 originally made by one of our developers on the Access team on his own blog that I'm moving here for the broader audience to enjoy.

"I find color schemes that I just like and that just feel right" - Alan Bean

Figure 1: Access 2007 Color Picker

In Access 2007, we have changed the color picker control from that old 80s looking control to a 21st century color picker. This new color picker is now consistent across all of Access, and is the same one that you will see everywhere in Office 2007. As a small note, this color picker has meaningful tooltips (not color numbers, but say 'Dark Green'), which makes accessible users out there very happy.

And yes, this means that you can now (finally!) use more than 16 colors in your datasheets. You can pick any colors you want for gridlines, background and alternate background (new 2007 feature).

You can see the new color picker in Figure 1.

You probably noticed the 'Access Theme Colors' section. Office 2007 has three themes: Silver, Blue, and Black. Access developers can develop solutions that look good in all themes by using the new set of Access Theme Colors. Alongside the colors available in Access 2003 (including the system colors, we'll talk about that in a minute), we have made available a group of colors that will change depending on which theme you are. We have 20 colors in the theme set.

The first 10 colors are colors that we use everywhere: border, background, alternate row background, selection, font color, etc. This set allows you to theme your forms and reports to match what we actually use in datasheets and everywhere in the product - so you will look as if it's an out-of-the-box Microsoft Access solution.

The second set of 10 colors is a gradient from light to dark. This set allows you to theme using variation on the same tone ("ton sur ton" like my mother likes to say). This is very effective in producing stylish, polished and professional looking reports and forms.

Given Access's supports of Windows System colors, this begs the question as to when developers should just use those vs. these Access theme colors. The answer is that when you'll want to chose whether your app themes with the Windows or the Office theme (e.g. your user has Green for Windows while Office is in blue). In Access 2007 I don't recommend using system colors because then your forms and reports will not be the same color as the ribbon, the task panes, the nav pane, the status bar, and the other Office UI. That said, they still work as well as they did in Access 2003 if you reaaaaaally want to use them.

An additional benefit that I haven't mentioned yet is that all of these Access Theme colors have accessibility support in them. If any of your customers uses high contrast, these colors will adapt to it and always show correctly. So not only are you able to build solutions that look good in the Office Themes, but ones that look correctly for all your customers that require accessibility support (government contracts anyone?).

Figure 2: HTML Style RGB and System Colors

As an added bonus, we are also changing the property sheet to make all of this more helpful. First, the color properties (border color, font color, background color, etc) are now combo boxes instead of text boxes. So when you actually select one of the Access Theme Colors in the color picker, we will show "Background (white)" or something like that instead of a bogus long number. Even further, we also list all the system colors in this combo box - so you will never ever need to use that unintuitive negative number format to get system colors in the property sheet (side note: as not to break your solutions out there, the OM is unchanged).

As the last coupe-de-gra - and I think this is awesome even although most people just shrug when they hear this - the colors are now shown as HTML colors. That means that all custom colors in the property sheet will be shown as "#FF0000" instead of 255. To make it extra-nice, we allow you to type in HTML colors and old Access numeric values (you can use this as an old timer trick to impress new Access 2007 users). No more conversion tables to find the colors you like.

You can see the new system color support and HTML style RGB colors in Figure 2.

Image Buttons

Zac Woodall — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:38:00 GMT

This is the first installment in a series of posts about Access 2007 originally made by one of our developers on the Access team on his own blog that I'm moving here for the broader audience to enjoy.

Up until this point, Access has supported command buttons with text or a picture, but never both at the same time. This has been a long standing request from users: the capability of showing both the caption and the picture. In Access 2007, you will notice a new property off of the command button called "Picture Caption Arrangement".

This property, which can be set to the following values:

No Picture Caption - This setting is the legacy behavior. If you have a caption specified, the button will show it. If you have a picture, only the picture will be shown;
General - The image will be shown to the left of the text (if you're in a left-to-right language, like English) or the right of the caption (if you're in a right-to-left language, like Hebrew);
Top/Bottom/Right/Left - The image will be shown in the specified arrangement: at the top, bottom, right or left of the caption (just pick one).

You will also notice that there is a new "Alignment" property. This property allows you to position the caption and picture within the command button to the following settings (note this property can be used whether you have just a picture, just a caption, or both):

General - This is the legacy behavior. The image and caption will be positioned the left of the text (if you're in a left-to-right language, like English) or the right of the caption (if you're in a right-to-left language, like Hebrew);
Left/Center/Right - The image and caption will be positioned to the left, centered or to the right (just pick one);
Distribute - This is equivalent to the "justified" setting in Microsoft Word. The image and caption will be spaced out to fill out the command button.

With these two new properties (which are of course also available through the OM), you will now be able to create some cool looking command buttons without any label trickery needed. Since you can now use JPEGs, PNGs and other newer image formats with Access 2007, you can create some really impressive buttons.

For example, in the snapshot below I created three buttons using Windows Vista backgrounds as the pictures. I changed the buttons' back style to transparent and played with the alignment and picture caption alignment settings:

PDF & XPS Now supported in Access Runtime!

Zac Woodall — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 01:15:00 GMT

Great news, you can now redistribute and use the PDF and XPS addin with your Runtime solution. Our download page has been updated to reflect this fact. Best of all, you don't need a new copy of the runtime to take advantage of this. The Runtime's code has not been changed. Your existing runtime solutions can now officially be distributed with the PDF and XPS addin by chaining the .msi for PDF and XPS into your install process for your app (after the Runtime).