Showing Pictures From Specific Customer Jobs

[voodoo_ca]

I have a database with all of our customer within it.
When a customer places an order, they get a unique order number.
I have started to scan each order (PDF), number the file accordingly, and you are able to open the customers order in PDF from within Access (Thanks for the help from this site with that).

My latest problem comes from pictures relating to customers orders - I get pictures:
1. Before we do work


2. After we do work
3. When there are problems with the work (service)
4. Sent in from customers to show problems

Today I came across a customer that had a problem before and they are saying it is happening again.
I know there were pictures taken, but I cannot find them - They could be in an email as an attachment, on another computer, on a phone as a picture or text, etc.

I want to put all the pictures related to a customer in one location and easily be able to see them with a click - possibly when you are looking at a customers record in the database.

With the PDF's process above, it was fairly simple because there will only be one PDF that is numbered the same as the order number.
With pictures, there could be multiple pictures of the same place, they could be associated with multiple orders from the same customer, and there may not be any pictures at all.

My first thought was to put the pictures into a folder and have access just open that folder with a click of a button.
Again, naming the folder poses some problems... customer names are often duplicated (Smith comes to mind), customers may have 10 orders and pictures from all or none of those orders (we really don't care, cause they are all usually pictures from the same house).

Because of the number of pictures, I would like to try and avoid "processing" each picture (Adding it to a database, renaming it very specific, etc.) - that's why I thought I could make the folder, drop the pictures in the folder, and somehow reference that to the customer record.

Is there another idea/process that might help or make this easier?
I tried searching around, but I really didn't see any other topics that were similar.

Thanks
Chad

[amrut]

Here is a suggestion -
For both the suggestions below, you have to identify a Unique ID for ex. OrderID which is a primary key in your order table. Use a single folder to store all this data as root folder.
Within this folder -
1. For each OrderId, create a folder named OrderId and save all the picture related to this order here. Loop through the files in this folder to access the pictures.
2. Save all the pictures in this folder with names in series like say OrderID is 525, 5251.jpg, OrderID & 5252.jpg for all the pictures related to OrderID 525 etc.

Saving the path to pictures in a table may be an option and easier to display on your form itself. Hope this helps.

[voodoo_ca]

Thanks Amrut,

I think I understand:

Mrs Smith has 3 orders with us - 5, 200, 1245
Each of those numbers would be a unique number that no one else would have.
Make folder with each of those numbers, and store the images in each of those folders.

I was kinda thinking the same thing myself - here is where I was "stuck"
Sometimes its a pain looking back at old pictures and trying to determine if they are from order 5, 200 or 1245 - most times we don't care, and most times it doesn't matter - they are all from the same house.
Your comment about "loop though the files" - is there a way to easily do this, or were you just using an "idea".
Basically when I am looking at a customers order and I can see a line for each order (in this case 5, 200, 1245) can you think of a way that I can just show all pictures related to a certain folder?
I can make a folder 5 for Mrs Smith and put all pictures (including future ones) into that folder... can I easily show those pictures without clicking on each order?
Maybe I answered my own question... what if I use the customers very first order as the naming for the folder - that way, if you click the first order you can see if there are pictures.

Can I have a window where pictures will automatically show up if there are any?

Thanks again,
Chad

[amrut]

You are the best person to decide how you wish to display/access the pictures. I would prefer to save the path in a table as instead of searching for folder named 200 on PC, it is easier to search order by name Mrs. Smith and related pictures to it. A mechanism to access/display the picture, once set up is easy to trace.
Here is a piece of code to loop through files in a folder -

Sub ShowFiles(FolderName As String)
    Dim File As Variant
    File = Dir(FolderName & "\*")
    Do While Len(File) > 0
        Debug.Print File
        File = Dir
    Loop
End Sub

One more way is if a folder exists, simply open the folder containing those pictures on a button click.

[voodoo_ca]

I am trying to understand the saving a path idea... and make sure I am not making too much extra work.
If I reference my original PDF idea, I don't have to add records to the database anywhere - all I have to do is scan a file and name it the same as the order.
So in this case, I would need to put the pictures for Mrs Smith somewhere - it really wouldn't matter what I am naming the folder because I will need to have the complete path stored in the table.
Then your piece of code would reference a unique ID from Mrs Smith and pull that folder path from the table to show the pictures.
Each time I want to add pictures for a customer, I need to add the path into the table for that customer
Is that what you mean?

So when you say "loop through" - is that like a slide show?

Thanks
Chad

[amrut]

Each time I want to add pictures for a customer, I need to add the path into the table for that customer
Is that what you mean?

Yes, this one time effort to save path will make it easy to pull picture whenever you need it based on the OrderID/Customer Name. You do not need any naming convention to be used as complete path to picture is saved in table with a OrderID foreign key.

You can choose to select a Folder/picture naming convention also instead of saving path in table. You will need some way to load only related pictures ( rather their path) in access to display them on a form.

So when you say "loop through" - is that like a slide show?

Loop through is a general term I used for accessing the pictures in a folder.
You can display pictures as slideshow but a picture with Previous and Next buttons below it should solve your purpose.