Programmatically Changing Form Appearance

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Sprinks - 22 Jul 2005 14:35 GMT

We have an ever-growing multi-purpose application whose grey forms have
become a little tired-looking. We'd like to make some simple changes to
color and positions of the title and eyebrow from their current locations,
etc. The title and eyebrow are in a consistent place form to form. Since
there about 100 forms, I'd like to do this programmatically.

I don't know how to:

- Cycle through the Forms collection
- Refer to a specific portion of the form, such as the Detail or Heading
sections

Can anybody point me in the right direction?

Thank you.
Sprinks

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Marshall Barton - 22 Jul 2005 17:14 GMT

>We have an ever-growing multi-purpose application whose grey forms have
>become a little tired-looking. We'd like to make some simple changes to
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
>Can anybody point me in the right direction?

I have no idea what you mean by "eyebrow". If you mean the
title bar, then you can not change its color because that's
a Windows Display Property, not an Access setting.

You can loop through the open forms using:
    Dim frm As Form
    For Each frm in Forms
        frm.Caption = "some text here"
            . . .
    Next frm

OTOH, it almost sounds like you want to do this for all
forms as a design change instead of at runtime. In this
case, you can use the Forms Container to locate the name of
each form Document. In later versions of Access it's easier
to use the AllForms collection.

    Dim fobj As AccessObject
    For Each fobj In Application.AllForms
        DoCmd.OpenForm fobj.Name, acDesign
        With Forms(fobj.Name)
            .Caption = "some text here"
                . . .
        End With
        DoCmd.Close acForm, fobj.Name, acSaveYes
    Next fobj

Signature

Marsh
MVP [MS Access]

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Sprinks - 22 Jul 2005 17:46 GMT

Marshall,

Thanks for your clear response; it's exactly what I needed.

BTW, the "eyebrow" reference was arcane jargon from my days of writing
product literature. In this case, it's a textbox that displays the purpose
of the form, located directly underneath the title.

Thanks again.

> >We have an ever-growing multi-purpose application whose grey forms have
> >become a little tired-looking. We'd like to make some simple changes to
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
> DoCmd.Close acForm, fobj.Name, acSaveYes
> Next fobj

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Sprinks - 22 Jul 2005 18:15 GMT

Marshall,

I spoke too soon. I placed the code in a Utility module, and placed a
command to call it. An error was generated "Method or data member not
found", with the debugger highlighting "AllForms". I'm using Access 2002
(10.2627.2625). I figured it might be a missing reference. Do you know
which one? I also wondered if the form my button is on would generate an
error when the code attempted to close IT.

Also, I changed the code to the following, testing it on a single form. It
generated the error "Operation is not supported for this type of object",
highlighting the For Each... line. Do you know what this means?

Thank you.

Sprinks

Public Sub UpdateForms()
' Loop through Forms container
Dim db As Database
Dim fobj As AccessObject

Set db = CurrentDb()
For Each fobj In db.Containers!Forms
'Application.AllForms
DoCmd.OpenForm fobj.name, acDesign
If fobj.name = "DuctTakeoffInit" Then
With Forms(fobj.name)
.FormHeader.BackColor = 255
.Detail.BackColor = 16777215
.FormFooter.BackColor = 16711680
End With
End If
DoCmd.Close acForm, fobj.name, acSaveYes
Next fobj
End Sub

> We have an ever-growing multi-purpose application whose grey forms have
> become a little tired-looking. We'd like to make some simple changes to
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> Thank you.
> Sprinks

Reply to this Message

Marshall Barton - 22 Jul 2005 19:20 GMT

You changed to using the Containers collection, but forgot
that an element in that collection is a Documents
collection. This doesn't matter because the AllForms
collection works in A2002.

I had a mental lapse, the For Each statement should be:

For Each fobj In CurrentProject.AllForms

Signature

Marsh
MVP [MS Access]

>I spoke too soon. I placed the code in a Utility module, and placed a
>command to call it. An error was generated "Method or data member not
[quoted text clipped - 38 lines]
>> - Refer to a specific portion of the form, such as the Detail or Heading
>> sections

Reply to this Message

Sprinks - 22 Jul 2005 19:28 GMT

Marshall,

Awesome. This is a BIG arrow in my quiver.

Thank you.

Sprinks

> You changed to using the Containers collection, but forgot
> that an element in that collection is a Documents
[quoted text clipped - 46 lines]
> >> - Refer to a specific portion of the form, such as the Detail or Heading
> >> sections

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David C. Holley - 22 Jul 2005 20:19 GMT

If you're familar with DAO, you can use it to open the MSysObject table
and look for objects with the Type -32768. When you encounter one, you
can open it in design view and change the properties for the various
sections using...

Detail
PageHeader
PageFooter
FormHeader
FormFooter

as their names. These, of course, are the DEFAULT names for the
sections. As long as you haven't changed them, there shouldn't be a problem.

***WORD OF ADVICE*** I would create a backup copy of the database FIRST
before trying this and DEFINETLY for testing & development.

Reply to this Message

Sprinks - 22 Jul 2005 20:24 GMT

Thanks, David.

> If you're familar with DAO, you can use it to open the MSysObject table
> and look for objects with the Type -32768. When you encounter one, you
[quoted text clipped - 29 lines]
> > Thank you.
> > Sprinks

Reply to this Message

David C. Holley - 23 Jul 2005 01:19 GMT

You may want to do something where you document any form that you're not
able to modify programically and then examine each. Basically, if you
try to reference the sections by the default names and are unable to do
so, the section was probably renamed.

> Thanks, David.
>
[quoted text clipped - 31 lines]
>>>Thank you.
>>>Sprinks

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