If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This article will offer a simple solution of how to let the person know what is needed from them on Microsoft Access data entry forms and where it is needed.

Last week I was asked for a way to give the person an on screen message while on Microsoft Access data entry forms without it requiring them to dismiss it by clicking the OK button on a message box. My reply was to have a label change it’s caption property from nothing to “The desired message…” then back to nothing using the form’s built in timer and some OnTimer event code. This article using some code similar to the last posted article.  It addresses two areas of Microsoft Access data entry forms assistance. The first is a visual clue as to where that skinny little cursor is blinking and second, what the user needs to know about the current form control that has cursor focus. The first area was addressed by changing the background color to a light shade of blue as the visual clue. The second area was addressed by having a custom message appear in a label at the top of the form. The messages are stored in the Tag property of each control that requires a message to be displayed by Microsoft Access. Data entry forms might have a message that simply lets the data entry person know that this is a required field or it might supply more about the type of information that should be entered in this field. This message is turned off when the user move to the next control on the form.

Below is a short video demonstrating how this works.

This green colored code below is all you need at the form level. It is placed in the form’s On Open Event.

Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer)
Me.SetFocus
Call SetEventHandlers(Me)
End Sub

Each form control has a tag property where you can type in the message you want to appear in the ‘lblControlMsg’ label that you will need to place on your form. If you need help finding the tag property see this video.

Place code below in a code module:

Public Sub SetEventHandlers(frm As Form)

‘Runing this routine from the OnOpen event of any form using
‘Call SetValidatorEventHandlers(Me)
‘will replace any OnGotFocus and OnLostFocus event code
‘with a call to the Highlighter function.
On Error GoTo errline
Dim ctl As Control
For Each ctl In frm.Controls
Select Case ctl.ControlType
Case acTextBox, acComboBox, acListBox
If ctl.Visible = True Then
ctl.OnGotFocus = “=Highlighter(true)”
ctl.OnLostFocus = “=Highlighter(false)”
End If
Case Else
End Select
Next
exitline:
Exit Sub
errline:
Select Case Err.Number
Case Else
MsgBox “Error ” & Err.Number & Chr(10) & Err.Description
GoTo exitline
End Select

End Sub

Public Function Highlighter(TurnOn As Boolean)

On Error GoTo errline
Select Case Screen.ActiveControl.ControlType
Case acTextBox, acComboBox, acListBox
If TurnOn Then
Screen.ActiveControl.BackColor = 16773857
‘requires that the name of the message control be labeled ‘lblControlMsg’
Screen.ActiveForm![lblControlMsg].Caption = Screen.ActiveControl.Tag
Else
Screen.ActiveControl.BackColor = -2147483643
Screen.ActiveForm![lblControlMsg].Caption = “”
End If
Case Else
End Select
exitline:
Exit Function
errline:
Select Case Err.Number
‘Form window not visible yet to see Screen.ActiveControl
‘(Only needed when setting event handlers by code)
Case 2475
Resume exitline
Case Else
MsgBox “Error ” & Err.Number & Chr(10) & Err.Description
GoTo exitline
Resume Next
End Select
End Function

Let me know how this worked for you by entering your comments and suggestions.

How to create Microsoft Access email is a common request. I received the following question a while back and it presented a great opportunity to show how useful Microsoft Access recordsets can be. Microsoft Access recordsets allow you to move through a set of records and use the data contained in them to perform such tasks as emailing, running reports or queries, analyzing data, etc.

The request was: “At the moment I am building a database for … I have a table holding information of the product, user, email address and balance field. I would like to create an automatic email alert to any user who’s balance is under £10 at anytime. I am guessing the solution is probably fairly simple but am really struggling. I have no idea how to do it so any help would be greatly appreciated.”

Here is the solution that I offered:

You can send the email by various methods but to use the built in Access email command that does not require Microsoft Outlook or access to an SMTP mail server just use the DoCmd.SendObject acSendNoObject (default). The acSendNoObject argument allows you to just send email message without sending an Access object such as a Report or Query object.

Just so there can be a date stamp of when the email was sent, first add a new date field called Email_Sent_Date to your table. Next create a query called ‘Email_Reminder_RecordSet’, that has the name and email address of users having a balance under 10 pounds and optionally who have not received an email in the past month or what ever time seems prudent. You will use the new field ‘Email_Sent_Date’ for this purpose and this will allow the following code to enter the date that the email was sent. The code on the on click event of your button will open a recordset on this query and loop through it’s records to send the emails. Here is the code:

‘This code is using DAO (Data Access Objects) for recordset control so be sure DAO is showing under Tools menu Under References in your code module as a ‘referenced code library or select DAO 3.6 to add it if it is not showing already.

If you copy and paste code from this article, Please replace all double quotes that look curly with standard straight looking double quotes.  These “Web Page Smart Quotes”, that have a curved look to them, will not compile in your code editor unless they are replaced with your standard keyboard double quotes.

Here is the code to paste into the OnClick event of the button you will use to trigger this emailing code:

Dim rs as dao.recordset
set rs = currentdb.openrecordset(“Email_Reminder_RecordSet”)
with rs
if .eof and .bof then ‘IT MEANS THERE ARE NO RECORDS, WE ARE AT THE BEGINNING OF FILE AND END OF FILE (No Records found for this query.)
Msgbox “ No emails will be sent because there are no records from the query ‘Email_Reminder_RecordSet’ “
else
do until .eof ‘DO UNTIL END OF RECORDSET FILE

‘THE NEXT LINE SENDS THE EMAIL MESSAGE
DoCmd.SendObject acSendNoObject, , , ![Email Address Field], , , “Low Balance Alert”, “Hello ” & ![First Name Field] & _
“, ” & Chr(10) & “You ballance is under 10 pounds. Please…”, False

.edit
![Email_Sent_Date] = now()
.update
.movenext ‘THIS MOVES TO THE NEXT RECORD IN THE RECORDSET
loop

End If
end with

‘CLEAN UP MEMORY AT END
If Not rs Is Nothing Then
rs.Close
Set rs = Nothing
End If

Please let me know how this works for you by leaving a reply / comment below.

Data validation checks that data are valid, sensible, and reasonable before they are processed. Microsoft Access validation can involve a time consuming choir if one had to do it for each control or ‘access field’, on each of your Access forms. Several have authored various approaches to automate Access validation for you. No single approach will work for all situations. Your form might allow a user to move off the record before Microsoft Access validation code is triggered. If you try to prevent the user from doing so, you will need to create additional design changes and add more complexity to your form.

I chose to take a conservative approach to Access validation, which works for most situations, but with a few more lines of code, will even prevent the user from leaving an unvalidated record no mater where he mouses to.

The user is notified if a form control failed validation, told why it failed, the control is highlighted briefly, and cursor focus is moved back to the failing control. Oh yes, it doesn’t try to validate form controls that come later, in the tab order, than where the user currently is. A single line of programming code is used on the OnOpen event of your form for this Microsoft Access validation of form data. The user can be prevented from navigating off the form record, adding a new record, or closing the form if validation fails, this requires an additional line of code on the appropriate form close, add new record and navigation buttons.

An Access developer just needs to enter a few characters into the ‘TAG’ property of a form’s control. The ‘TAG’ control property stores extra information about a control. The videos below will show you how to find this property in the ‘Property Sheet’ of the control you want to validate and will demonstrate the Access validation of a form using the code found from a link at the end of this article which moves you into the article containing the full programming code. There is no programming involved unless you wish to expand on the supplied code’s functionality.

Access Form Data Validation Demonstration Video:

from youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCMjARPiJY

You may get your example demostration file containing all code for Access 97, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007 – Get File #51

This is where you will find all the Microsoft Access validation code in next article:

http://dailyaccesstips.com/code-for-microsoft-access-validation-of-data/

How to locate the Access Form Control ‘Tag’ Property for Access 97, 2000, 2002XP, 2003 video:

from youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16HVabt2gM4

How to locate the Access Form Control ‘Tag’ Property for 2007 video:

from youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hViGDmDU3P4