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This is the fourth in a series of articles about highlighting objects on Access forms.

In this article, I will explain how you can highlight the search matches in both forms and reports.

Almost fifteen years ago, I used this idea to improve the appearance of a search feature in our School Data Analyser application.

This is a very large application with several thousand objects:


Keeping track of the many objects became a significant task for our developers as the application continued to grow over the years
As a result, I implemented a powerful Database Object SQL Search feature for myself and other developers to locate objects when required.
It could also be used to Find & Replace specified text in selected objects.

For example, in the screenshot below, a search was done for all queries whose SQL contains 'Active' and 'DOB' (date of birth)
Of the 1552 queries, the search found just 2 queries with both text strings. It took 55 seconds to complete.


Selecting an object from the search results list, opens a new form with (in this case) the query SQL in which the search strings are highlighted.


It is also possible to view the SQL for one or all objects in the list in a report where once again the search strings are highlighted



So, how is the search match highlighting done?
First of all, the query SQL is read:


Next, this is saved as rich text and code is used to format each instance of the search string in bold red text with yellow highlighting:


For example, the use of rich text (HTML) tags mean the string: Active is replaced by Active