Display a different Sub-form based on a drop down box selection?

[jdanieluk]

I was wondering, is there a way to have a form, with a sub-form, that uses the selections from a drop down box to bring up different sub-forms.



Say as an example, I have a Maintenance Form that a technician could open and select items from a drop down box for whatever they are working on. If they were doing a Oil Change they would select that item and the sub-form would change to the Oil Change Entry form. If they were doing a Brake Job they would select that item from the list and the sub-form would change to the Brake Job Form. etc etc..

Maybe I am looking at this the wrong way?

I was just wondering if this can be done from a drop down box.

Any ideas are appreciated.

[pbaldy]

Sure. Presuming the combo contains actual names of subforms, set the SourceObject property of the subform control in the after update event of the combo, using the value from the combo.

[ssanfu]

An alternate method: don't know how many sub forms you have, but you could use a tab control.......

[jdanieluk]

Great ideas guys. I have used the tab approach for another form, I just wanted to try out using the drop down box. Thanks for the idea on how to do that. I'm going to mess around with this a bit.

[Micron]

If the combo does not (cannot) contain the subform name, another way would be to write code that uses the combo value in its AfterUpdate event to set the source object property. If there are more than, say 3 or 4 possibilities, I'd probably use a Select Case block, e.g.

Select Case Me.cmbMyCombo
 Case "apple"
   set source to apple subform
 Case "orange"
  set source to orange subform
 Case etc.
End Select

I'm presuming stuff here, like you know the syntax for the subform control reference and when to use or not use quotes around the Case values.

[June7]

I don't really like Navigation form but this is exactly what it accomplishes without VBA.

[orange]

As June suggested Navigation form may be appropriate.