looping through controls on a form

[khumbo]

Hey guys, i've been googling for hours on this but can't seem to find anything.



I'm trying to loop through all the textboxes on a form and if the textbox is empty then change the back colour to red. I've found several pieces of code that can help me with this but i think here is where the problem lies: when i declare the control, its starts off as 'Dim Ctrl as Control' and soon as i go to the next line, 'Control' goes down to a lower case 'control' and as a result i cannot use several of its properties such as .Value. Anybody know what's going on and how i can fix it? Much appreciated!

[Missinglinq]

This behavior, changing the 'C' to lower-case, would indicate that you have a Control, somewhere, named control (spelled with a lower-case 'c') and this is confusing the Access Gnomes! Use 'Find' to figure out where it is and change the name to something else.

Linq ;0)>

[khumbo]

thanks a bunch, will give this a shot and let you know

[khumbo]

tried searching through all the controls but couldn't find any with a name that includes 'control'. Any other ideas?

[June7]

Would Conditional Formatting serve for this situation?

Are you doing this with form in Continuous or Datasheet view?

[Missinglinq]

Sure:

1. Expression Is
2. IsNull([ControlName])
3. Format the BackColor as desired

Sadly, while some things, in Conditional Formatting, can be done for multiple Controls, in one fell swoop, this is not one of them; it has to be done separately for each Control.

Of course, if the OP were to be a bad boy (is that sexist?) he could not use Option Explicit, for the Form, and wouldn't have to Dim the Variable; the looping code would still work.

As I said before, changing the 'c' in 'Control' means that it's been used as a name, somewhere; that's the only time, to my knowledge, that the Access Gnomes exhibit this behavior. Tracking something like this down can really be time-consuming, especially in a big app. You have to schlep through every Form, Report and Module (class and standard) as well as all Queries and SQL Statements. I think using the binoculars ('Find') with the 'Search' Option set to Current Project, will search the first three listed, but not Queries and SQL Statements; they have to actually be eyeballed, if I remember correctly.

Linq ;0)>

[June7]

That search for 'current project' is only in the VBA editor to search code. To search through Access objects need a third party add-in like Rick Fisher's Find & Replace for about $50. Saved my sanity more than once.

Code to set textbox property won't work for Continuous or Datasheet view. Need Conditional Formatting for that.

[Missinglinq]

...Code to set textbox property won't work for Continuous or Datasheet view...

Except if you're Locking or Locking and Disabling the Control. It works, for these, placed in the Form_Current event, because neither

ControlName.Locked = True

nor

Locked = True
Enable = False

changes the appearance of the Control!

The target Control, on all Records will be Locked/Disabled or Unlocked/Enabled, conditionally, according to the current Record. But since it will format appropriately when you move to a given Record, and the formatting only matters when you're actually on that Record, it'll work for that.

Linq ;0)>

[June7]

True, I was over-generalizing. Nice clarification, linq.