Highlight part of a textbox value, when setting the focus

[ssissons]

I am editing all of the form fields, when I click the "Save" button. This is creating a string that will be displayed in a msgbox. When the user clicks on "OK", I want to set the focus on the first field in the error list, and highlight part, or all, of the data in the field.

So, the questions are:
1. Can I set a variable to the name of a field, that will be used in the SetFocus command?
2. Can I highlight a portion of the data in a text box? i.e. If the txtTitle length is more than 35 characters, set the focus to the txtTitle and highlight the first 35 characters (or the characters after the 35th).

[ItsMe]

You can use the name of a control to adjust its properties via VBA. One property is Back Color, I believe. Changing the Back Color to yellow would give a highlight affect. I do not believe you can affect a portion of the Back Color vs the entire control's Back Color.

Alternatively, you could use HTML to format portions of the text within a TextBox control that is using Rich Text.

[ssissons]

Okay, now a little more explanation for #1.

Let's say I have 15 fields on my form, and 3 of them have errors. I have concatenated the three error messages into one string, with vbCrLf in between. I display a MsgBox with the complete error message. When the user clicks the "OK" button, I want to set the focus to the first field with an error. Can I have a variable with the control name, and use that with the Setfocus method? How would I do that?

[ItsMe]

...Can I have a variable with the control name, and use that with the Setfocus method? How would I do that?

You could create a variable to store the name of a control. However, the controls are already part of the Form's collection. There is already memory set aside for the controls and there is not any need to use a variable to identify the control. I sometimes assign a control to a variable using the index of a control within the collection.


I think it is something like this
Dim ctl as Control
Set ctl = Me.Controls(2)
ctl.Setfocus


But you can simply do the same thing this way
Me.NameOfControl.SetFocus

If you want to get real fancy, I sometimes use the Tag property vs. using the name property of controls. You can assign a text value of the Tag property via the Property Sheet. Then you can use VBA to iterate the controls within the Form's collection. If a Tag matches the search during the iteration. You can change the background color of the control and set focus. Using this approach, you would want to declare a variable to use while iterating the collection.