Ahhhh...the Lovely Switchboard

[Hey Lucy]

I swear I'm stumped. Created a switchboard for menus for users. Have done this thousands of times. Using 2010 now. When the switchboard is created, it has pre-set labels in the form header [label1, [label2, etc. These labels do have text in them [Just me database] (based on database name).

If I change the name of label1 to Just Me Industries (which is what I want it to show), then I get a macro error upon re-opening the database.

If I leave the name as[label1] to avoid THAT issue, I change only the caption to Just Me Industries, then the Name property displays the Name as Label1 (which it would), and the Caption property displays Just Me Industries, but when saved, closed and re-opened in form view, the text in label1 shows [Just Me database, but the Caption property still shows [Just Me Industries], the text I want.

 

[Hey Lucy]

Thank you, Paul. I could do it in earlier version, so I don't understand why I can't in 2010. Seems like 2010 took a lot away from the general Access programmer, not VB.

There's a work around I can do, or I may just possibly create from scratch.


Lucy

 

[Hey Lucy]

Hey Paul,

I solved my problem by creating my own switchboards via forms. Actually found that while it was a lot of work, it works a lot better and gives me more control!

My first thought using the wizard was to just hide those labels by making the fill and text colors the same as my background color and then placing my labels over them, but I still had issues with the menu items themselves and gave up on using the SB manager!

 

[Hey Lucy]

Thanks Pat. That's an option I didn't think of. I may have to give that a try, too, because it would be less work than creating my own switchboard, although I already have that done. Still, there will be other dbs I'll have to create and this is good to know!

 

[gemma-the-husky]

I don't quite understand how you modified switchboard lables

you don't get the labels to display be editing switchboard properties.

the details are all derived from items in the "switchboard items" table

maybe you only ever had a single switchboard page. once you have multiple pages you need to rely on the switchboard's "automatic" mechanism


same as Pat. I never used the switchboard wizards. I always edit the switchboard items table directly. And my standard switchboard now has something like 25 items.

3 columns of 8 options, and a final exit/return option.

And I do like the standard switchboard. Many users are used to hierarchical menus.

 

[Hey Lucy]

I built my switchboard and its items from scratch by using Forms. Could NOT get the Switchboard Manager to work like I needed.

Now I'm working on building the user permissions and logins.

Another question, I may have to ask in a different forum...

This DB is going to eventually reside on a server. Since I will have menus for each user level, is there any need to do BE/FE still?

 

[gemma-the-husky]

main reasons for splitting the FE AND be

1. robustness. less likely to get corruption in the data back end
2. security. easier to back up
3. development. you can change the front end, without having to worry about managing data. therefore you can develop off site, or against a test copy of the data

in point of fact, using a split database is virtually indistinguishable from using an unsplit database. There are just a handful of things that don't work quite the same on a split database - among which you cannot use an indexed "seek" function, but instead you have to use "find".

 

[Hey Lucy]

Thanks for the info!!! Very helpful!