search box on form for "contains"

[iankerry]

Hi

I have a continous form, and i am constantly right clicking and finding the "contains..." filter.

is there a way of having a box on my form, into which i can type a few letters and depending on which field my cursor was in, it does a "contains..." filter?

many thanks

i.

 

[DCrake]

You should be able to use the Screen.PreviousControl to determine the last field visited. However one problem is a general textbox for the "Contains" or "Like" criteria would need to validate the type of data you are searching for. Lets say you were on a date field and then the user typed in Fred in the search box you would end up trying to search for a date called Fred! Also you need to employ the correct syntax when building your search string. I suggest you only do this for text type fields.

Just a push in the right direction.

David

 

[iankerry]

thanks for the push David. can i beg your indulgence further?

I have been trying some things since i got your message. I should say i am only a beginner!

i added a textbox called search, then used an update event, but got a bit stuck.

i created a "stringwhat" expression which equal whatever is in the textbox, then tried a docmd apply filter with a where condition, but of course hit a brick wall.

to make it simpler to start the search box need only reference one of the fields at the moment. Because the deeper i delved the more complex. The fields, say the "film name" field, actually carried an ID number of a film. so if i typed mamma mia in the search box it will never find it as mamma mia is stored as 196. So i tried to reference the column of the combobox i was using.

sure enough the filmID.column(0) returns the actual film name.

BUT, this is a continuous form.

then i went into meltdown. Way over my head.

If it has got too complex, feel free to ignore. but if you can start me off in the right direction?

thanks