Hiding Paragraphs (Collapsing Text) Based on Values

[JFord]

I have a form that displays many different fields, but usually most of them are blank and in those cases I would like to display nothing (hide the field and its label).

I know that I can set the Visible property, but that leaves my form looking like Swiss cheese.



Is there any way to hide the whole paragraph so that the lines below will automatically shift up and eliminate the blank lines?

[June7]

"usually most of them are blank" - makes me suspect a non-normalized data structure.

What do you mean by 'hide the whole paragraph'. Access has controls, not paragraphs like Word.

Textboxes have CanGrow and CanShrink properties but the controls still occupy space and those properties don't seem to work on form, at least not that I've ever seen. They work on report, although there too the controls still occupy space, even with 0 height.

[Missinglinq]

...Textboxes have CanGrow and CanShrink properties but the controls still occupy space and those properties don't seem to work on form...They work on report

Better to say CanGrow and CanShrink only works when printing...whether printing a Report or printing a Form (seldom a good idea) and even then they don't 'move up' to occupy empty space...that would require a good deal of additional code...having to figure out which Controls are populated...and manipulating the appropriate ones into place.

The best workaround, for this kind of thing, would be to utilize a Tabbed Control, with the usually filled in data on the first Page, and less used Controls on other Pages. We usually think of Subforms going on Tabbed Pages, but you can simply put Controls from a single RecordSource on multiple Pages. When you reference these Controls, you do it just as if they were on a regular Form, i.e. Me.ControlName.

Linq ;0)>

[JFord]

From the initial responses I am guessing that this can only be accomplished through a fair amount of VBA, but here is a simple example of what I want.

Rather than the following...

Field A: Data
Field B: <Blank>
Field C: <Blank>
Field D: Data

I want...

Field A:Data
Field D:Data

Though, of course, any or all of the fields (and there are more than four) may be blank. FYI, none of these fields can be edited, but I doubt that matters.

I used the word paragraph to indicate that the entire line should be removed.

[June7]

Not making sense to do this for a form. On a report can set the textboxes Height to 0 and then position them tight against each other. They still occupy space and the white space will vary depending on which fields have data but might not be very noticeable.

Why are you arranging the fields vertically? Exactly what kind of data is in these fields? How many fields? If the fields are not intended to be editable, just to display info, maybe should concatenate. Something like: Field1 + Chr(13) + Chr(10) & Field2 + Chr(13) + Chr(10) & Field3

[CJ_London]

sounds like your fields are in one record, in which case I would just concatenate them with line feeds.

something like

field1 & iif(field2 is null,"",vbcrlf & field2) & iif(field3 is null,"",vbcrlf & field3) & iif(field4 is null,"",vbcrlf & field4) etc