Another conditional irritation

[PiedPiper70]

In Access 2003, if a condition is met I want 3 fields to "disappear". Seems easy, just change the back colour and text colour. But, the various grey colours offered do not match the default form background colour.

This is very annoying as I don't want to change the forms background colour, it would like different than all the other forms.

So, any ideas how I can get round this problem

Thanks
Dave

 

[missinglinq]

Are you trying to do this on a Single, Continuous or Datasheet View Form?

Linq ;0)>

 

[PiedPiper70]

Oops, should have said - Continuous

 

[missinglinq]

With that type of Form, this can only be done through Conditional Formatting, off of the menu/ribbon (not through code) and while I've seen many attempts, over the years, of people trying to work around this by doing the 'set the BackColor and ForeColor to the same color' routine, like you describe, I've never seen it done to where I thought it looked like anything but a totally amateurish job: I've never seen one I would deliver to a client! Even if you could match the colors to the BackColor of the Form, itself, unless you set the Special Effect Property to 'Flat,' you can still see an 'impression' of the Control where it resides, on the Form. And since you cannot set this, through CF, in order for the Form to look even half-way profession, you have to set all of the Textboxes the same way, and a Form full of 'flat' Textboxes looks terrible, to me.

Of course, that's just one man's opinion! Your mileage may vary!

Linq ;0)>

 

[PiedPiper70]

Very interesting post Linq.

So have you any suggestions about how I might approach this problem. I can think of a horribly long winded way putting all the data into an array and then writing it to rows of text boxes and buttons, and then arranging for a complex way of scrolling up and down the records. Sounds nasty, but it does give me ultimate control - have you any thoughts?

Dave

 

[missinglinq]

I try to make my apps as pleasing to the eye, as reasonably possible, as well as easy for the end user to work with, but at the end of the day we're talking about business software, here, databases, not graphics apps or social networking apps, and the primary mission is for it to fulfill the business needs it's been created for, in an accurate and timely fashion.

Using the kind of hack you've just described, with Unbound Forms, is simply, to my mind, a waste of time and resources, especially in relation to an Access project and for the sole purpose of hiding/showing certain Controls. They really undermine the function of Access, which is to facilitate Rapid Application Development . With Bound Forms Access does the vast majority of the heavy lifting; with Unbound Forms the developer has to write code for everything, even the most mundane tasks, such as the navigation you’ve mentioned.

If Unbound Forms simply have to be used, you'd be far better off using a straight VB or C++ front end with a SQL Server or Oracle back end.

• You can create an EXE file which gives total protection to your code/design
  
• You can distribute the db to PCs without a copy of Access being on board
  
• Your data security is far, far better than anything you can do in Access

Why, exactly, does this have to be a Continuous View Form, and why do these Controls have to 'disappear,' as opposed is the simply having them Disabled, which can easily be done with Condition Formatting?

Linq ;0)>

BTW, how's it going with that rat problem, in Hamelin?

 

[PiedPiper70]

Thanks for your input Linq.

This is part of an existing program that has already been in use for 4 years so cannot be changed now. I'm stuck with Access for the time being.

This module is a budgeting system. The budget consists of 14 main sections, each section has a number of sub-sections, and each sub-section contains the basic budget lines which consist of a text description and a number of numerical fields. I want the user to select the main section from a list, and then to see the entire sub-section on a continuous form. Each line on the form will consist of a number of text boxes and a command button. Each line can be either a sub-section heading or a basic budget line. If the line is a heading then I want to hide, or disable the other text boxes and the command button.

The key point is that I'm trying to show an entire section in one continous form. One of my options is to let the user choose the main Section, then the sub-section, and then only display the lines for that sub heading. If I did this then I wouldn't need any conditional formatting but the client doesn't want this. I may have to insist !!

ps many, many years ago I worked for a company called Hamlin - you can guess the rest

 

[PiedPiper70]

Thanks Pat

After 2 days of fiddling around I think I've reached the same conclusion. The user will select a section, then see a list of sub-sections. On selecting a sub-section they will see a continuous form with the budget line detail. It will look perfect with no compromises or short cuts

Funnily enough this is exactly how I did the utility for them to enter the all the section/sub-section/line detail in the first place !!