Acess XP UI Questions

[gem1204]

I’ve worked with all version of Access in the last 7 years. I just converted all my databases form Access 97 to XP. And XP has gotten a lot worse!
1. Is there any way when viewing a form with a sub form to have the sub form show up as a white box(Access 97) rather than showing the subform in design view. It gets confusing to be looking at a form in design view and also see the subforms in their design view. I would rather just see the white box. The bad thing is that sometimes AccessXP shows ths subform in its design view but sometimes it only shows the white box. Is there some option you can set to control this!!!!!!? It's driving me crazy!
2. Sometime when working in an XP database and you may have Umpteen objects open, and you close just one of the objects, you get this save dialog box that has everything currently open in it. If I'm working on an object, I may have 3 or 4 other objects open as a reference. When I finally get it right after hours of debugging and want to make sure I save it, I don't want to have to decide right then wheter or not I want to save the umteen other objects I may have had open. Even going from form view to design view of a form for example, this dialog box pops up with all these other objects listed. You never know what going to happen if you click no (Don't save'). Does the object get closed with out saving, does the object stay open as it is...........I can understand when you exit the database getting a prompt for all the objects, but every single time! Is there an option you can set for saving objects? I've looked at the optios but haven't seen one. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.
3. Where is the expression builder in the code window?........I know, now you have that 'wonderful' object browser .
4. ADODB syntax is confusing! Never know what has to be set as ADODB.SOMETHIONG and then New ADODB.SOMETHING . What if you need a query definition in ADO. there is not ADODB.QUERYDEF. Do you still use dao for that? I thought ADO was supposed to be a replacement for DAO. What if you want to define a query definition? Do you still have to add a reference to the old outdated dao library. I use the execute method of a query def (qdf.execute) rather than docmd.open “QryName” a lot
5. What about the code window? How do you save a module without exiting the database?
I already know that queries run up to 5 times slower? Is there any improvement in XP

There are many other issues – to many to list here. Does anyone know if there’s a solution to any of these issues? Any comments or help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[cpuSmoker]

Access Xp Problems

Try upgrading to Access 2003.
The whole office suite runs AT least 2x faster than Xp. I typically only use Office Xp for interoperability, IE they use the same mdb format, ie 2002.

1) Not sure. Working with subforms drives me too NNNUUTTSS. I am sticking to tab controls, alot of coding in the same form but not as many issues to deal with.

2) Simply deselect the ones you don't need to save right away and vioala?.

3) Expression builder as far as i know has always been in the form properties window. The vb ide assumes that the control that you select from the top left window is going to be hand coded.

4) Are you coding connections to foreign databases? Must you use that type of syntax all the time?

5) Press the save icon on the toolbar, the see #2.

In access, I always thought that a query was the fastest way to get the data. I mean if your looking for a single value, you could use the dlookup command but even if you wrote your own function to query and return the data it would be faster than that function, at least in my opinion.

 

[RoyVidar]

Isn't this a bit to many questions

1 - That is one of the features I liked best when I moved from 97. I'm not sure there is a property/selection to alter it.

2 - Sometimes it can seem like a pain, but my impression is that later versions can be a bit more sensitive to running code/performing operations when objects are unsaved (read corruption), so I appreciate that too. And as stated by cpuSmoker, you can deselect those objects you don't need to save.

3 - Expression builder is not available in the code window anymore, you can still use it from a forms design view/query... This has probably something to do with the "renovation" of the complete environment starting with 2000. Previously, the VBE was integrated in Access, now it is a complete interface of itself, with, in my view, much better navigation possibilites.

4 - If you're comfortable with DAO, just set a reference to DAO (Microsoft DAO 3.6 Object Library - in VBE - Tools | References) and continue to use it. On native tables, DAO is often faster, whilst ADO offers better connectivity to other providers. To get/alter queries, you can retrieve them for instance thru ADOX, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnacc2k/html/adocreateq.asp.
I've been told about the "death of DAO" for a while, but I don't think it'll happen soon. I think ADO and DAO will coexist until VBA disappears (to be replaced with VB.Net? and ADO.Net?).
There are some fast ADO methods too:

* open a readonly, forwardonly recordset
dim rs as adodb.recordset
set rs=currentproject.connection.execute("select max(myfield) from mytable",,adcmdtext)
if not rs.eof then
debug.print rs.fields(0).value
end if

* execute an action query
currentproject.connection.execute "update mytable set myfield = 15 where somefield = 100"

5 - Ctrl+S saves the project, as the save button.