First Published 19 Mar 2024                 Last Updated 27 Apr 2024

I was very pleased to have been invited to lead a presentation at the annual online Access DevCon conference for the fourth consecutive year.

The Access DevCon presentation took place on on Friday 19 April 2024 and was called You Can REALLY Do All That With Forms?

The topic title was inspired by an excellent article from 2006 by the late Michael Kaplan called You Can Do That with Datasheets?

My session was a whistle-stop tour through a wide ranging series of tips and tricks to enhance the functionality of your forms in Access.

Some of the features will already have been well known to experienced developers. However, the initial feedback received indicated that everyone attending will have learned several new tips and tricks they will want to include in their own Access applications.

The main part of the presentation demonstrated how the functionality of continuous forms can be significantly extended to match or exceed that natively available in datasheets. All the items covered have related articles elsewhere on this website, together with free example apps containing all required code.
In most cases, you will be able to include the additional functionality in your own apps with only small changes to your own code.

Click to download a PDF of the presentation with links to all related articles: Colin_Riddington_Forms_DevCon24     PDF (approx 380 kB)

Many items also have accompanying videos on YouTube . More videos to follow in the near future


Click the links to go the related web pages.   Click any image to view the accompanying video



Topics covered included:

1.   Add Highlighting

      a)   highlight current control

           


      b)   highlight selected column

           


      c)   highlight filtered columns and highlight sorted columns

           


      d)   highlight current record

           


      e)   highlight entire form (dim background)

           


      f)   highlight required fields

            Video to follow

      g)   highlight search results

           



2.   Enhance Datasheet Forms

      a)   add buttons / search etc in a modified split form

            Video to follow

      b)   as a subform

            Video to follow

      c)   Protect Data in datasheet tables and queries

           


      d)   Lock Down datasheet objects

           




3.   Enhance Continuous Forms

      a)   paint me transparent     (selectively hide controls)

           


      b)   add multiselect filter     (2 pages)

           


      c)   hide and restore columns     (2 pages)

           


      d)   freeze columns     (3 pages)

           


      e)   move & resize columns     (2 pages)

           

      f)   hide duplicate values     (2 pages)

            Video to follow



4.   Miscellaneous Items

      a)   Click me & I disappear     (hide control with focus)

           


      b)   Dictation

           


      c)   Move and resize borderless forms     (2 pages)

           


      d)   Rounded corners

           


      e)   Gradient Background Fill

           


      f)   Stop forms opening from Nav Pane

           


      g)   Animation, transparency & fade

           


      h)   Scrolling & Flashing text

           


      i)   Control Help Text

           


      j)   Progress bars

           



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Colin Riddington           Mendip Data Systems                 Last Updated 27 Apr 2024

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