How do I make photos in a URL appear on the Access Form automatically

[cmedved]

Hello ~



I have a database of my company catalog in Access 2016. I'm trying to create a user-friendly form. One of the fields is a hyperlink to a website that has a photo of the item. I would like that field to automatically appear on the form as the photo, not the hyperlink. I've only found ways to do this if I have a file with the photos in it. There are too many photos to download to use that method. I know there is a way to do this, I just haven't been able to find it.

Please help.
CMedved

[orange]

Can you show us the link to an item from your catalog?
Tell us more about the website that has the photos.
What exactly have you tried?

Before retiring, we had a database of companies (50000) with their products, services, exporting/importing info, contacts..... and logos, photos etc.
The images were processed for size consistency and placed in an online folder. A reference(s) to that folder and image(s) was inserted into the related company record. This was not Access -it was an Oracle based online web application.
My point is that somewhere you have to store the photos and have process(es) to ensure photo is identified in the related record when the record is accessed by the client.


UPDATE:

I did some searching and found this article and example from a colleague on a different group.
It may give you some insight into what is required.

[cmedved]

Hello ~

Here is an example of one of the links, http://www.moen.com/shared/images/ko_weblarge/225.jpg. These are our customer's products. If I copy and paste the web address, the photo shows up. I don't know much more about he website.

I've tried coding the URL as a text box and adding and image box and changing the control source to the Product Image URL. That did not work. I also changed it back to a hyperlink which did not work either.

[orange]

How will you keep your links current? Seems any vendor/manufacturer could change the photo, or its location at any time.

Did you look at the example from Gustav in my last post? He is a very experienced and knowledgeable developer.

[cmedved]

I did not see the directions for Gustav, but will review. Thank you!

[pbaldy]

Post 3 was moderated, I'm posting to trigger email notifications.

[isladogs]

I regularly use the URLDownloadToFile approach mentioned in gustav's article (e.g. to download Google maps) and it works well
...but it does need to save the image(s) to a file.
As I don't need to keep the images, I overwrite the same file each time
I've not tried the URLDownloadToCacheFile but it looks like it will suit your purposes.

However, you may want to also check out the LoadPictureFromURL approach mentioned in this thread https://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1758167 by strongm.
IIRC it only works with an ActiveX form