I have an Access2003 form where I wanted to group several controls together and change visibility programatically, though VBA code.
Is this possible? I do know that I can group items through Format -> Group, but if I do that, how do I refer the the entire group in my code?
Thank you
You could place all the controls in a group box control then change the visibility of the group box itself.
You could also add a value in the tag property of each control you want to group, then in VBA loop through the control and check for that value and change the visibility there.
Set the tag property of all the controls you want to group to something like groupABC or whatever you wish.
Then somewhere in your code use this to loop through the form controls and check for it.
Dim ctrl As Control
For Each ctrl In Me.Controls
If ctrl.Tag = "groupABC" Then
ctrl.Visible = False
End If
Next
To elaborate on my comment on using custom collections, you'd do something like this in your form's module:
Private mcolGroupABC As New Collection
Private Sub IntializeCollections()
Dim ctl As Control
If mcolGroupABC.Count = 0 Then
For Each ctl in Me.Controls
If ctl.Tag = "GroupABC" Then
mcolGroupABC.Add ctl, ctl.Name
End If
Next ctl
Set ctl = Nothing
End If
End Sub
Private Sub Form_Load()
Call InitializeCollections
End Sub
Private Sub ShowControls(mcol As Collection, bolShow As Boolean)
Dim ctl As Control
For Each ctl In mcol
ctl.Visible = bolShow
Next ctl
Set ctl = Nothing
End Sub
To hide the controls, you'd do this:
Call ShowControls(mcolGroupABC, False)
And to show them:
Call ShowControls(mcolGroupABC, True)
That's pretty simple, no?
This is the kind of code I use in my apps all the time, and I've used it ever since the first time I implemented it, about 10 years ago, and noticed that it was clearly noticeably faster to show/hide controls with the custom collection than it was with walking the entire Controls collection.
The only caveat is that if one of the controls has the focus, it will error out if you try to hide it. That's easily enough addressed, since if you're hiding a group of controls, you surely have an appropriate place to set the focus before you do so.
I like the tag property suggested by Joel Gauvreau. Other possibilities include a tab control and / or subforms.