Want Search Textbox to filter form but keep focus & highlight

[bignose2]

This is driving me crazy,
over the years ended up having lots of different tricks to achieve this but always messy & all over the place. There must be a clean & proper way.

Basically I have a text box. I type a name & it filters the form.
For speed & ease I type the name, either press tab or enter. Don't want to have to reach for the mouse each time or have to let it tab to a button to press space or something.

I want it to stay on the search textbox and highlight, ready to over type.
I use me.filter usually in AfterUpdate but mostly OnExit letting it naturally tab to another control & then back again. This is always tricky as not lost focus yet can't easily move focus around.

Whole host of issues with this in either procedure.
AfterUpdate I would think is the obvious but you can never highlight.
Me!FindNames.SelStart = 0
Me!FindNames.SelLength = Len(FindNames.Text)
At it hits the end sub in the AfterUpdate I guess it is reset as this looses the highlighting & cursor is at the start of the textbox, you have to delete previous. I often want to keep what is types also so not auto delete.

I have looked at before update & cancel = true but this seems to bring up a whole different set of issues.

this is what I thought should work & be so simple but stepping through all highlighted OK but as soon as you F8 on End Sub if clears.

Private Sub FindNames_AfterUpdate()

Me.Filter = "Names Like '*" & [Forms]![regFAYT]![FindNames] & "*'"
Me.FilterOn = True

Me!FindNames.SelStart = 0
Me!FindNames.SelLength = Len(FindNames.Text)


End Sub

Actually bit confused at this minute as does not seem to be moving onto the next control at the moment no matter what I do. Sure use to. I know this is effectively re-querying so perhaps updating in a loop but odd as sure used lots of times, will investigate but sorry to post an incomplete question now..

 

[bignose2]

The best I have managed so far is

Private Sub FindNames_AfterUpdate()
FindNamesUpdated = True
End Sub

Private Sub FindNames_Exit(Cancel As Integer)
Me.Filter = "[Names] Like '*" & [Forms]![regFAYT]![FindNames] & "*'"
Me.FilterOn = True

Cancel = True ' Cancel either way, but focus still stays here, needs the Setfocus to move on so unfortunatley now allow normal tab

If Not FindNamesUpdated Then Me!Reset.SetFocus ' still runs below FindNamesUpdated = False

FindNamesUpdated = False

End Sub

This actually works, FindNames is automatically highlighted I guess on the re-filter

The Cancel = True is the main help but what I don't understand is without the SetFocus it will stay on FindName even with the Cancel no matter what. It would be nice if it could tab away or directly Alt X to exit etc.
I can probably use Keydown etc but again always seems unnecessary.

 

[Pat Hartman]

The technique you are using of filtering is very "Access-like". It works well enough for Jet and ACE tables but is very inefficient for ODBC back ends so I never use it.

That said, You can solve the problem by creating another control. Make it small, make it invisible by making the text the same color as the background. It's only purpose is to catch the focus and return it to your search field. Use the GotFocus event of the dummy control and use that to set focus back to the search field and select all the text. Make sure that the dummy control immediately follows the search control in the tab order so that it will get the focus when you tab.

The problem with what you are doing is that focus has not actually transferred to a different control and you can't set focus to a control that already has the focus.

 

[bignose2]

Hi,

Thanks for your advise.
In the end I thought i would try a different approach.

I use AllenBrowne FAUY, find as you type, a lot & is really great as don't get any of these problems.
I assumed perfect for just one field search but always avoided if wanted to filter on 2 or more fields assuming would be slow'ish & needed some re-coding.

Anyway adapted so can use more than just the one search criteria (not as slick as AB's as lost dropdown) but found works great (even better than I imagined) & still pretty fast.
I have 2,3 or more filter criteria text boxes working on different fields.

I have in on a table with 10,000 records and works fine, I guess if considerably larger may slow but I think will cope with quite a size and sure my coding & tables even are in-efficent.

 

[isladogs]

Just a thought:

My approach would be to use cascading combo boxes instead of a search box to cover more than one field