When to use " ! " or a " . " when referencing objects and properties

[Access_Novice]

Here are some examples from the Microsoft website for the Access 2013 Object Model where they are giving examples of explicit and implicit references to a Controls collection on a form, and a form containing a subform.

Forms!OrderForm!NewData
Forms!OrderForm.Controls!NewData


Forms!OrderForm.ctlSubForm.Form!Controls.NewData
Forms!OrderForm.ctlSubForm!NewData

How do you know when to use an exclamation mark or a period as a separator between collections, objects and properties?

[RuralGuy]

One piece of information that may help is that "intelligence" only works when you use the dot ".".

[JoeM]

Don't you mean "intellisense"?

[RuralGuy]

Yep! My bad.

[JoeM]

Yep! My bad.

You can just blame it on Spell Check!

[John_G]

Small wonder you are confused. IMO, these two examples from Microsoft are wrong:

Forms!OrderForm.ctlSubForm.Form!Controls.NewData
Forms!OrderForm.ctlSubForm!NewData

They should read:

Forms!OrderForm!ctlSubForm.Form.Controls!NewData
Forms!OrderForm!ctlSubForm!NewData

The standard I try to use is : Use "!" when referring to a single member of a collection, e.g. an open form, a control, or a member of a recordset.

Use "." when referring to a collection itself (e.g. .controls) or to a property or method.

Very often Access can figure out what is required from the context, but I know (from experience) that there are times when using the "." results in the "property not available" (or something like that) error, and the compiler won't always catch it - it happens at runtime.

JoeM - sometimes I think that intelligence doesn't work whether you use dot or Bang (!), especially with end-users!

[JoeM]

JoeM - sometimes I think that intelligence doesn't work whether you use dot or Bang (!), especially with end-users!

Yes, its almost as common as "common sense"!