I need some bmp's and icons for forms and reports

[burrina]

I have had no luck searching for any good bmp's,icons or background images for my forms and reports.


Anybody care to share what they have accumulated thru the years?

[pkstormy]

There are tons!! In Google, type in: "XXXX Pictures" (where XXXX is anything such as Buildings, Houses, Stop Signs, Blue Arrows, Green Down Arrows, etc...etc...)
Click the link that shows right under google (ie. google matches)
Right-click on a picture that you like and click the "Save As" in the popup box. Change the Folder to your image folder on your drive. Most pictures you can change to a bmp but a jpg works just as easily (you can re-save it in MSPaint as a bitmap). I always change PNG to a jpg (bmp isn't an option).
I then use MS Paint to resize the picture and create a bigger border between the picture and the outer edge which gives it a nice look on the MSAccess button. Once I get the picture-edge setting, I then shrink it until it fits into the same size as the button (measure both or keep shrinking and changing it in MSAccess to the new file with the smaller image.) It takes a bit getting the hang of the process but once you get down a routine to sizing the picture to fit nicely on the button, you have thousands to choose from on google (ie. type 3d arrow pictures to see some nice arrows). I found the same phone picture used on all iPhone and Android phones and used that image for one of my MSAccess buttons which the users click on to make calls.

MSAccess 2010 does a 1000 times better job working with *.bmp images as the button graphic versus prior versions. Unfortunately for the background images, they tend to be over-powering on any form. MSAccess needs to build in a "fade" setting to fade the image to a light, light, background type tone.

You'll still want to minimize the size of the bmp file before setting the MSAccess button to it. Larger bmp file sizes will slow down the opening of the form and bloat the *.accdb file. I typically try to keep all my bmp files less than 1 meg.

After I got the hang of editing the bmp files in MS Paint to make them look good on the MSAccess button, I searched and downloaded a ton of more pictures. I keep a separate folder for each button sizing. It's really a lot of fun taking any picture and adding it to a button. The hardest part was deciding which picture was the best since there's almost too many to choose from.

Forget about any websites where you must "buy" a downloaded zip file with images. Googling truly is your friend when it comes to finding/saving images. Note also that you can do the Right-click on the image trick on almost any website for just about any image. The only places you 'can't' use the right-click trick is on the sites which want you to pay for their download file.

[Rod]

Just poking my nose in again ...

I always change PNG to a jpg

PNG has the benefit of allowing transparent backgrounds. Changing BMP or JPG to PNG is a little more difficult. I use GIMP - it's free - and allows me to specify which parts of the image are to be transparent. Tedious though, be warned.

[burrina]

As a LONG time Open Source advocate and proud Linux Mint user I have used Gimp for quite a while and yes, I always convert to png.

I ONLY use MS krap because of Access.

[pkstormy]

Ever since MSAccess 2010, I haven't had any problems inserting a bmp file. I tried PNG. I had better luck with bmps and didn't have the problem with transperency like older versions of MSAccess did.