Inform user that all fields should be populated prior to saving

[MFS]

Looking for a message box that informs the user that all fields must have data entered before they exit or save to the Database table.
Also, when the user starts typing in any field the system automatically generates a new ID in the table. How can I keep this from happening until the user has completed all fields and a save button was pressed?
A yes / no box should also appear asking the user if they would like to save prior to exiting the form or closing the DB. (Yes saves the data, No sends the user to Main form and nothing was saved to table.)

[ranman256]

use a 'temp' data entry table/screen that a user enters the data into.
If ALL the data fields are filled ,THEN run an append query to the main table, and THEN the ID is created.

[Bulzie]

Or on BeforeUpdate on Form, test each field for data.

If IsNull(me.field1) then

msgbox "Field1 must have data"
me.field1.Setfocus
end

else

If IsNull(me.field2) then

msgbox "Field2 must have data"
me.field2.Setfocus
end

End IF

End If

Search MessageBox Yes No for examples on how to do those.

[Micron]

The id is not saved until you move off the record or until any action is taken that saves the record begin created, so is that really an issue? If you were to cancel the record, the id is gone too. If it is an issue, I agree with the temp table solution. As for validating data entry, there are other options too, like having validation at the table field or form control level. However, this can be clunky and annoying since once data entry has been started in a control, it has to satisfy the requirement before you can leave it. So the BeforeUpdate is also what I'd use, however if you have a lot of controls to validate, the suggested code approach gets rather long. It also suffers from the aforementioned need to satisfy validation. This means that if you want to fill out other controls and come back to one when you've remembered what to put in, you can't.

My preferred approach is to give each necessary control a tag like Reqd and loop through the form controls, looking for textboxes with that tag. Then I pass that control name to a little function that tests for Null and empty strings and if found, the function passes the label text of the control back to the sub. The name is added to a string list variable and the offenders are presented all at once. In order to get the label caption, it has to be attached to the textbox, otherwise you can only get the textbox name without resorting to more code to get the proper unattached label. Should you ever add a textbox to the form, all that's required to include it in the validation is the tag.

[davegri]

Micron's suggestion is elegant and your users will find it much to their satisfaction.

[MFS]

Thank You all for your support, I believe your posts will support my request, although I cannot try at this time.
I will respond once I have a moment to return to this project