add a help for a form control

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Teri - 30 Mar 2005 17:11 GMT

I have a complicated form that I want the user to be able to access help on
some of the controls. Some of the help will be one sentence and others could
be a pararaph or more. How can I get my form to do this?

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Ron Kunce - 30 Mar 2005 18:24 GMT

There are many different ways to provide help for form controls, however,
some of the more professional methods can get somewhat complicated. The
simplest way to provide a short description is to use either, or both, the
"Status Bar Text" property (less intrusive) and the "ControlTip Text"
property. The "Status Bar Text" will display a text description of the
selected control at the bottom of the Access window. The "ControlTip Text"
will display your entry as a small pop-up next to the mouse pointer when the
mouse pointer lingers over the selected control. The drawback is it is
limited to only a short sentence.

For longer sentences and/or paragraphs, you can use a pop-up dialog or a
msgbox to display your help text when the user needs it by double-clicking
the control, using a function key with the control selected, or by clicking
on a small button or label (i.e., a question mark) next to the control.
Where there are lots of controls to provide help, it may be best to set up a
table of help text fields and have a single routine to populate the dialog
or msgbox with the appropriate text depending on the control that is
selected.

A more professional approach would be to use a help system compiler to
create a windows like help file which is invoked for the control by using
the F1 function key for the form or selected control. Access help has a
"Create custom Help for a form, report , or control" topic which discusses
all the above.

>>> Teri<Teri@discussions.microsoft.com> Wednesday, March 30, 2005 >>>

I have a complicated form that I want the user to be able to access help on

some of the controls. Some of the help will be one sentence and others
could
be a pararaph or more. How can I get my form to do this?

Reply to this Message

Teri - 30 Mar 2005 18:59 GMT

the pop up box or msgbox may serve my purpose. How do I liink the graphic to
a help table? What fields do I need in my table?

> There are many different ways to provide help for form controls, however,
> some of the more professional methods can get somewhat complicated. The
[quoted text clipped - 27 lines]
> could
> be a pararaph or more. How can I get my form to do this?

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Ron Kunce - 30 Mar 2005 20:12 GMT

The graphic? do you mean an picture image control on the form or an image
as part of the help, or are you referring to the form as a graphic? I get
the feeling you are a novice when it comes to VBA coding, in which case a
complete answer could be quite lengthy. All image controls have a Mouse
Click or Mouse Double-Click event which can be used to call the help
function. Unfortunately, an image has no keypress event to use a function
key to evoke the help.

As far as a table to store your help text, it could be as simple as an
autonumber field as a primary key and memo field to contain the help text.
You may however, add an additional field to hold the name of the control on
the form and one for the name of the form (if you have more than one form
for which you want to provide control help). It would also be helpful to
have title field (255-character string) to hold short title to be displayed
with the memo, help description (especially if using an Access msgbox). You
would then need a function defined to lookup the help record needed based on
the invoked form/control name and to display the dialog form or a msgbox
using the fields from that record. Next, you would need to set a call to
the function from each control's double-click, Mouse Move, KeyPress, or
other event, to invoke the function by passing it the name, or other
identifier, of the control to the function as a parameter.

>>> Teri<Teri@discussions.microsoft.com> Wednesday, March 30, 2005 >>>

the pop up box or msgbox may serve my purpose. How do I liink the graphic
to
a help table? What fields do I need in my table?

"Ron Kunce" wrote:

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Teri - 30 Mar 2005 21:55 GMT

The graphic I refer to is a question mark that the user can click on to get
help on the form. My first idea was to place the question mark next to each
control on the form so they can access the help. Thanks for the help.

> I have a complicated form that I want the user to be able to access help on
> some of the controls. Some of the help will be one sentence and others could
> be a pararaph or more. How can I get my form to do this?

Reply to this Message