Solved Highlight field contents on click (1 Viewer)

[estelleh]

I have hit a bit of a snag with moving between fields on a form. If I use the <TAB> key the contents of the field is highlighted (as I expect it to be - I selected "Behavior on entering field / Select entire field" in Options / Client Settings. However, if I click on a field, the cursor is placed wherever I click, instead of highlighting the contents of the field. I have plaued with putting this in the On_click event of a field:

FieldName.SelStart = 0
FieldName.SelLength = Len(Me.FieldName)

It works fine on an ordinary textbox, but on a currency field it selects the "$" and the first number only. Also, it seems like a Herculean task to put code in each textbox's On_Click event throughout the whole system.

Is there an easier way to make Access 2016 highlight the contents of a field when clicking on it?

 

[CJ_London]

use conditional formatting. no code required

select all the controls you want to have the effect, then in the ribbon click on conditional formatting>new rule and select 'field has focus'. Then select whatever background colour you want

 

[oleronesoftwares]

hi, write the below vba code, under the on click event of the control

Me.TextBoxName.SelStart = 0
Me.TextBoxName.SelLength = Nz(Len(Me.TextBoxName), 0)




where TextBoxName is name of the control in the form

 

[June7]

Do you want to highlight control background or do you want to select contents?

Afraid there is no simple/quick way to implement the selection code.

 

[theDBguy]

Hi. Not in front of a computer right now, but I think there is a setting in the Options screen to select the entire content when you enter each control.

 

[June7]

Hi. Not in front of a computer right now, but I think there is a setting in the Options screen to select the entire content when you enter each control.

Read OP, says that was done. Works for Tab or Enter control navigation but not mouse click.

 

[estelleh]

Do you want to highlight control background or do you want to select contents?

Afraid there is no simple/quick way to implement the selection code.

Damn - I need to select the content.....

 

[estelleh]

Read OP, says that was done. Works for Tab or Enter control navigation but not mouse click.

Indeed...

 

[estelleh]

hi, write the below vba code, under the on click event of the control

Me.TextBoxName.SelStart = 0
Me.TextBoxName.SelLength = Nz(Len(Me.TextBoxName), 0)




where TextBoxName is name of the control in the form

Have that - per my OP - it works for a straight textbox, but for a currency textbox it only selects the currency symbol and the first number.

Also, I have 36 forms, some of them with a LOT of controls.... I could be here for a month of Sundays programming each On_Click event.

 

[estelleh]

use conditional formatting. no code required

select all the controls you want to have the effect, then in the ribbon click on conditional formatting>new rule and select 'field has focus'. Then select whatever background colour you want

Thanks - am after selecting the contents of the textbox though, not changing the background colour....

 

[oleronesoftwares]

hi @estelleh ,
Since you have code that works for text values,
With regards to currency values, you can use conditional formating.
The configuration has to be done in each form

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...rmatting-44fe5b63-b6fa-48ea-966e-b5e54eb072b0


watch the video in the link above

 

[CJ_London]

I could be here for a month of Sundays programming each On_Click event.

create a public function in a standard module - something like

Function beenClicked()

    With Screen.ActiveControl
        .SelStart = 0
        Select Case .Parent.Recordset.Fields(.ControlSource).Type
            Case 5 'currency
                    .SelLength = Len(Format(Nz(.Value, 0), "£#,##0.00"))'change this to the currency format you require
            Case Else
                     .SelLength = Len(Nz(.Value, ""))
        End Select
     
    End With

end function

then open a form in design view, select all the controls you want to have this functionality and against the onclick event (i.e. where you would normally see [Event Procedure]) put

=beenClicked()

repeat for other forms.

If you have issues with other field types - here is a link to their enum identifier, extend the case statement for other field types

Field.Type property (DAO)

Type property

docs.microsoft.com

Note this does not work for unbound controls, but you could modify it to check the controlsource and take appropriate action. I have not included error handling since I've no idea what errors you could get

 

[theDBguy]

Read OP, says that was done. Works for Tab or Enter control navigation but not mouse click.

Oops, sorry I missed that. It was still too early here when I checked the forum. Cheers!

 

[theDBguy]

Indeed...

Got it. Sorry for barging in. Cheers!

 

[June7]

I stand corrected. I forget about "ActiveControl", never used it.

 

[estelleh]

Got it. Sorry for barging in. Cheers!

No, no The "Indeed" was for Access, not you!

 

[CJ_London]

So did you solve your problem? Or try my suggestion in post#12?

 

[estelleh]

So did you solve your problem? Or try my suggestion in post#12?

I solved the problem by explaining to the client why what she wanted is a bad idea!

In playing around with solutions (including yours to a degree - thanks!) I realised that selecting the contents of a textbox in the On_Click event would mean the client would never be able to edit the contents of the textbox, but would always have to retype the entire field every time they clicked on any object - unlike the selection by using the TAB key, which still allows one to position the cursor at a specific spot.

As a matter of interest, I came up with a work around for the currency fields - running the code in debug, it turned out that the code

FieldName.SelStart = 0
FieldName.SelLength = Len(Me.FieldName)

does in fact return the correct number of characters (6), but the character selection is wrong because of the currency symbol and the formatting of the amount with a thousands seperator. So the value R 1 234.56 correctly returns a value of 6 characters, but only selects R 1 23 (being the first 6 characters). I fixed this by adding an arbitrary amount (in my test situation I made it 5 - although it didn't seem to matter what number I used) which then selected the entire contents.

Thanks everyone!

 

[June7]

Use OnEnter or GotFocus event instead of OnClick. Then user can type or click or use cursor movement keys.