I rearranged the sub procedures in my forms into a logical sequence to make code maintenance easier. Everything was working fine until I decided to split the database. Straight after the split the forms would open OK but they didn't recognise any mouse actions like click and hover. It took me ages to realise that if I put the sub procedures back in alphabetical order then the problem would go away! Does anyone know why they have to be in order?
Just sounds like your subs became unlinked.
Access will sometimes remove the [Event Procedure] to bind an event if you remove a sub, and won't automatically add it back again if you place it somewhere else.
You can fix this by going to the controls, and pressing the button to add a procedure to the target event. This is a bit of an effort, but it usually doesn't happen. I've noted it when pasting subs to an external editor and then back again with a save in between.
Related
I have a pretty good project task management system going in Microsoft Access, but one feature I'm still missing is some type of 'quick entry' like facility often found in many good productivity applications.
This is how it would work:
Scenario 1:
You're in another application, working on a few things, and you just remember something that needs to get done. You hit your predefined shortcut: CTRL + ALT + T (again, from outside Microsoft Access) and it brings up a small access form with a text box in to which you can type what needs to get done, e.g.
Inform key stakeholders of concerns regarding timeline
you hit return and that gets saved as a record in Microsoft Access instantly.
An alternative, and slightly more complex scenario...
Scenario 2:
As above, but you want to add further details besides the task name, such as the person you need to speak to, and a due date. The input in to the text box could look like this:
Inform #Sally of concerns regarding timeline >+3
Where '#' tells access to populate a field called 'Contact' with 'Sally' (unless it already exists) and '>+3' is interpreted by access to mean a due date 3 days from today.
How difficult are Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 to perform? What level of VBA/programming knowledge would be required?
Thanks,
I would say it requires a fair amount of confidence in VBA.
You need to register a global hot-key; that is, a keyboard-combination that can be captured from outside the Access application. It requires win-api calls. Here is some code.
You need to know where to place these calls. I believe you have to put them in a standard module, not in the form's class module. (I haven't double-checked this, it's late.)
You need to have a little understanding about what this code is doing. NEVER attempt to type this api-code - copy it from a reliable source, exactly as it is!! You don't need to fully understand the code, but you need to know how (and when) to call each function.
Once you've registered the hot-key then your VBA needs to bring your application to the front and display your form, and focus it. Reliably bringing the application to the front may also require api-calls.
Once your form is opened (and focused) you can have a button on it to parse the information in its textbox. However, if you are designing the form anyway, I would add checkboxes, comboboxes, etc., rather than trying to parse a complex sentence/ statement.
I'm trying to extend the behaviour of ttk::combobox to make it behave like the Google search box in my browser - i.e. I'd like it to drop down automatically and limit the entries in the listbox to those which match the string that I've typed in so far. Ultimately, I'd like to select the part of the string that's been autocompleted so that the next character the user types will cause it to be deleted and re-start the matching process.
I found the page on the Tcler's wiki, but that appears to select the entry with the letter just typed, which isn't what I want. (Consider a user selecting from a list of US States. When they type A, I want the selection to be limited to Alabama, Alaska, Arizona and Arkansas; when they then type an L, the list should be limited to Alabama and Alaska. The code on the wiki would select Alabama when the user types A, then Louisiana when they type L.)
I tried defining a few bindings on the ttk::combobox, but gave that up - to be honest, I can't remember why - and have tried to extend the behaviour of a ttk::entry to cover it.
After borrowing liberally from ttk/combobox.tcl I've managed to post a listbox and to limit the entries in the listbox, but am having big problems now that I've added bindings to make the up and down arrows alter the selection. To be precise, the selected item is moved happily, but some of the time when the entry widget loses focus, the whole application hangs up and my tclsh soaks up all the CPU.
I'm developing using ActiveTcl 8.6 on both Windows and Linux and the code seems to behave the same on both platforms, although I haven't tried on Linux since I first saw it not hanging in Windows. I'd be very happy to share my code, but since the demo script runs to about 450 lines, I wouldn't read it myself if someone else posted that much.
Can anyone help by asking the right question to set off a lightbulb for me? The problem feels like a timing problem, but I've no idea where to start trying to track it down.
Many thanks.
Edit I've been racking my brain, and I think the reason I abandonned the attempt to extend ttk::combobx was because there were already a large number of bindings in place, and some did things that I didn't want. The current effort uses a validatecommand on the entry widget and Key-Up, Key-Down, FocusIn and FocusOut bindings.
Current code is on pastebin here.
Well, that was embarrassing!
I took another look at the code on the wiki and discovered that it did the thing I most wanted. It doesn't post the listbox, but it does autocomplete, and if you attempt to navigate the (unposted) listbox, by pressing Key-Up or Key-Down, it starts off with the appropriate item highlighted.
That's quite enough for what I need; if I decide I really must have the listbox posted, I can see about that at the time. (Given my bad experience trying to roll my own, however, I suspect that I'll just live with this.)
Many thanks for the forebearance and suggestions.
Well, I do hate asking vague questions but I can't help it this time:
Some macros I'm coding are taking a long time to run - and I just realized that it's incredible boring to just wait for it.
I want a progress bar. Or even a message box stating "Loading..." with a cancel button.
I tried using MS help to do this, but they require an ActiveX controller and that's just not an option.
Personally, I really didn't even try to code anything becouse I'm not even sure if it's possible! Everytime I open a MsgBox the whole program stops running, and that's not my idea.
I tried checking some concepts in C+ or Java, but most people seem to use a function just for that.
Anyway, any kind of lead or small piece of information would help a lot.
PS.: Yeah, I'm using Access 97, and that's not something I can change in the moment.
The problem with using MsgBox is that it stops everything until it gets a user response. That's not what you need for this.
Try making a very simple Wait form. It would have 1 unbounded label that says "Please Wait". Before your calculations begin, call it up with a docmd.OpenForm(... and close it when you're done with a docmd.closeform(...
In Access, always supposed that in Forms modules, as in other (class or regular) modules, objects and normal variables cease to exist when the code is exited, or in the case of Forms, when the form is closed. Is that correct ?
I am wondering because I built a form used to scan barcodes on orders, and it gets slower and slower during the day, until the user closes and reopens the DB, then everything is back to normal. Closing the form does not seem to be enough. I analysed my code, and I can't find much, so serching for the culprit...
I think ideally when objects go out of scope they will be destroyed and the memory they used will be released. However, since sometimes things don't go according to plan, I thought we're supposed to explicitly close and release any recordset objects we create in our code ... just to be safe.
Is this form being opened and closed many times during the session? I had a problem in Access 97 where a similar problem would occur. Hideing the form instead of closing it and then making it visible again solved the problem. However any form level variables had to be explicitly set to zero or zero length strings.
For a major school project I am implementing a real-time collaborative editor. For a little background, basically what this means is that two(or more) users can type into a document at the same time, and their changes are automatically propagated to one another (similar to Etherpad).
Now my problem is as follows:
I want to be able to detect what changes a user carried out onto an HTML textfield. They could:
Insert a character
Delete a character
Paste a string of characters
Cut a string of characters
I want to be able to detect which of these changes happened and then notify other clients similar to "insert character 'c' at position 2" etc.
Anyway I was hoping to get some advice on how I would go about implementing the detection of these changes?
My first attempt was to consider the carot position before and after a change occurred, but this failed miserably.
For my second attempt I was thinking about doing a diff on the entire contents of the textfields old and new value. Am I missing anything obvious with this solution? Is there something simpler?
It is a really hard work make this working today, for several reasons, but
maybe you will need to restrict only to some browsers. read: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL/Attribute/oninput the alternative to "oninput" is listen to all input events (keyboard, mouse, dragdrop) I suggest to use "oninput"
html is not perfect... even html5. input and textareas supports only single-range
selections. you can solve this using designmode/contenteditable instead of
textareas/textfield
detecting offsets of what changed is a hard work: read
-- https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Document_Object_Model_%28DOM%29/window.getSelection
-- http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/range_intro.html -- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms535869%28v=VS.85%29.aspx -- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms535872%28v=VS.85%29.aspx
you may need a "diff" algorithm written in javascript! http://ejohn.org/projects/javascript-diff-algorithm/
one personal note: detecting words, characters changes may be totally non-sense and not useful, detect instead paragraphs changes, or in case of an excel-like worksheet, the single cell
I hope this helps
feel free to correct my English!
My pseudocode/written out response would be (if I understand your question exactly) to use jQuery to detect keyup events and then save the input to the server via ajax, then also take the response and post it back to the input. This isn't very efficient, but basically the idea is that you're constantly posting and checking what else has been posted. If you want to see what someone else is doing in real time, you can ping the server every second or so and update with the response.
All of this of course can be optimized, but it still is kind of taxing for a server. You could also see if you can implement Google Topeka Wave for your project, or get in touch with Google Topeka to see how they do it :)