How do I rotate a combo box or entire form

[hotmert]

I have a form that displays record using a subform. The subform has a combo box on it and I want the values displayed rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise.

I have included a (photoshopped) picture to show what I mean.

How can I achieve this

 

[John Big Booty]

I'm pretty sure that what you are looking to do can't be done.

 

[boblarson]

I have a form that displays record using a subform. The subform has a combo box on it and I want the values displayed rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise.

I have included a (photoshopped) picture to show what I mean.

How can I achieve this

1. that isn't a combo box

2. that is a subform

3. you can't rotate controls like that in Access, unfortunately, unless you write your own custom control in something like VB, VB.NET, C++, C#, etc. You might be able to find a third-party tool but I don't know of any like that.

 

[Banana]

Three "cheap" options:

1) Use image controls, put in as many as you think you'll need, then when the subform loads, dynamically toggle which images will be displayed or hidden. Of course that means you need to create an image for *each* record in subform. You can then code the click event to do something useful.

2) Use Steven Leban's tab control, I remember him having a sample on his website with vertical text. IINM, his sample doesn't require much on your part (e.g. you don't have to make an image for each record), so this may be easier to dynamically build a tab control using his sample by looping through the subform's recordsource and assigning the name to it.

3) Yet another option is to see if you can find a control in .NET that does for you, and write a custom library and send the recordset to that library for a dialog form display. This is easier to accomplish *ONLY* if you don't mind doing it on a separate dialog and you don't need to interact between that dialog form and the Access forms. Otherwise, Bob's correct that you'll need an ActiveX control to be able to display this on the Access form.

Best of luck.

 

[Mike375]

Re: How do I rotate a combo box or entire form

You can rotate a textbox or label by setting the Vertical property to Yes but combos or list boxes don't have that property.

If you want to rotate the form for print purposes then you could do a Print Screen and paste that into Paint and rotate it there.

And if all that fails you could turn the monitor on its side

 

[hotmert]

Thank you all for your replies. It cant be done.
So is there another way to create this printable wallet size document, with this layout. I have re-orientated the the form to read vertically but this will print one record per page, which is wastful.

 

[Banana]

If you want to create something for printing out, I would probably just export out the data to either Word or Excel or maybe even Publisher. They're more better suited for this kind of task. Access reports is great when you just need detail report without too much formatting, but when formatting becomes more important, Word or Publisher is a better candidate.

HTH.

 

[hotmert]

Yeah, but can I automaticaly produce the infromation on any creation in other office apps.

IE: In access Form "Operator Detail", hit button marked "Print Licence" and vouala a populated perfectly quafted licence appears for, say, word/publisher. ?? umm.

Just 1 problem after another with this simple base