Using VBA to Send Data to a Table from an Unbound Form Control

Mike Stowe — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:27:22 GMT

Today’s guest author is Justin Farrell, author of the Access 2007 tutorial http://www.dealing-with-data.net.

This is a useful trick which gives the Access Developer additional flexibility when working with forms and data. It uses Access VBA and DAO.

Once the user enters data into the unbound textbox (txtBox) and clicks the Send Data To Table button, Access opens a recordset based on the tblTest table. The txtBox data is then stored in a variable called varTextData and then added to the rst recordset. The recordset is updated and the txtBox control is reset ready for new data to be entered. The result is an unbound form that interacts with a database table.

Private Sub cmdSend_Click()

Dim db As DAO.Database
Dim rst As DAO.Recordset
Dim varTextData As String

    varTextData = txtBox

    Set db = CurrentDb
    Set rst = db.OpenRecordset("tblTest", dbOpenDynaset)

    rst.AddNew
    rst!fldTest = varTextData
    rst.Update
    rst.Close

    db.Close
    Me!txtBox = ""
End Sub

Justin’s supplied a sample database that illustrates this technique.

Send your Power Tips to Mike & Chris at accpower@microsoft.com.

Use a validation rule instead of the Required property

cdowns — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 19:17:40 GMT

Reader Štefan Masič provides today's Power Tip.

When you want to require users to enter a value in a field, a common technique is to set the Required property for that field to Yes (for example, tabPerson.Name.Required = Yes). However, when the user is then adding records to the table and neglects to insert value in that field, the built-in error message that appears is not very helpful:

"The field <TableName>.<FieldName> cannot contain Null value because the Required property is set to True. Enter a value in this field."

This error message is not appropriate for typical users, whether it's in English or any other language. Instead, I use another simple approach when building table properties:

Set Table.Field.Required = No
Set Table.Field.Validation Rule = IS NOT NULL
Set Table.Field.Validation Text = The value in field <Caption of field name> is required. Enter a value or select it from the list.

In this way, you can provide more specific information and helpful hints about how to enter the correct data, rather than just a "required" message.

Note: When converting an Access table into SQL Server we must consider this design and set this table property manually.

Microsoft Access Team Blog : Table

Using VBA to Send Data to a Table from an Unbound Form Control

Send your Power Tips to Mike & Chris at accpower@microsoft.com.

Use a validation rule instead of the Required property

"The field <TableName>.<FieldName> cannot contain Null value because the Required property is set to True. Enter a value in this field."

Send your Power Tips to Mike & Chris at accpower@microsoft.com.