Form Split/Frame? (1 Viewer)

[recanem]

Hi all,
I'm looking for a pointer on what to read/search for as I'm not sure what it would be called in an access form or if it even exists.

I'm looking for a form functionality that would be similar to the freeze frame concept of excel. This could be static where once laid out in design view it's set or it would be even better if it could be user modifyable.

The current form that I'm working on has ~200 controls (20 Cols by 10 Rows) in the detail section, and ~25 controls in the header (20 Col titles and a few display filter controls) Basically, I want to allow the user to always see the first few columns (and the relevant header information above those columns - i.e. Col Title and Filter Controls) regardless of how far to the rightthey scroll when reviewing the remainder of the controls.

Any pointers or tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Mike

 

[DCrake]

Straight away I dislike your approach, why are you trying to re-invent the wheel? why try and emulate Excel in Access. Most likely you data is not normalised to the extent that if fowwls the normal conventions applied to Access tables.

To me the form sounds far too busy can you not reduce the number of controls you intend to populate on the form? You could have a header section of the form and a series of tabbed pages using a tab control to split the data into signicant sections. Not knowing the structure of your system this is purely conjecture on my part and may be well of the mark. This is only my initial impressions.

David

 

[recanem]

Yes - i agree on the emulation bit, this however, is just one piece of the project, which while done more cleanly in excel is not acceptable from the customer's PoV, they are looking for an all in one system and access is the commonly available tool.

Aside:
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There are other forms leverage access's ability to capture user input, display results, clean interaction with the data, as well as tabs that allow drilling into specific items that the summary page highlights. This is really where access shines vs. excel I believe.

The summary page is kind of the high-level starting point and the data and while not ideal, will have to work.
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Back to the splitting/freeze frame question. The only means I've sort of started looking at that might work with this is by splitting the detail section into 2 separate sub forms (static columns on one, scrollable cols on other), and that seems clunky, making think there must be some other type of control(?) out there.


Thanks,

Mike

 

[gemma-the-husky]

howe can you have 200 controls on a form

not saying you cant, but it smacks of a spreadsheet which is NOT the way to go. You need to be sure the data is properly normalised


the right way is maybe to have a tabbed control, each tab showing certain controls

 

[AlexanderJHale]

Although this thread is old, I had a similar request from one of my senior users for a fairly large report (not a report in the Access sense. It is a form because they need to be able to edit the compiled data) that is shown as a subform to allow for easy switching between these five related forms. The report is designed as an overview of specific processes and needed all 17 fields. However, the fields are wide and required scrolling to see all of the fields, which hid the identifier field (Name) when scrolling.

I found that the best solution for their request was to change the view of the subform to datasheet, which allows you to freeze the panes just like in Excel. You lose any special form design, but my users are more interested in the data rather than the design. I've only played around with it a little, but I've saved the freeze pane which carried over into other users' experiences.

 

[MajP]

@AlexanderJHale
This may be of interest

You Can Do That with Datasheets?

docs.microsoft.com

 

[CJ_London]

this is a 13 year old thread guys

 

[Pat Hartman]

Allowing the presentation requirements to dictate the schema is poor practice. You might as well stick with Excel.

You might look at this sample for a way to have your cake and eat it too.

Bound Denormalized Form

I've left the old versions here but ALWAYS go to the last post to get the current version. This database contains two examples (using the same technique) of how to take data that is properly normalized and display it so that it looks like a spreadsheet (rows displayed as columns) but is...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

 

[CJ_London]

this is a 13 year old thread guys

 

[Pat Hartman]

and a new user reactivated it with a question rather than starting a new thread

 

[CJ_London]

no - he reactivated to provide a solution

 

[Pat Hartman]

Well, I sure hope that the original OP is still interested