Access Cookbook - Ken Getz [88]
Once the form has presented the list of forms and reports, click on the items you want documented. Click again on an item to remove it from the list of selected items. In Figure 4-5, for example, three items are to be documented. You can also use the Select All, Select All Forms, and Select All Reports buttons to select groups of items.
Figure 4-5. zsfrmVerifySettings is ready to catalog all controls on three selected forms
When you've selected all the forms or reports you'd like to manipulate, click the Document Selected Items button. This will work its way through the list of selected items and document all the properties of each control on each of those items.
When the documentation process is finished (it may take some time to work through all the items you've selected), click the View Results button. This will open zsqryProperties, which is shown in Figure 4-6. It lists all the properties of all the objects and the sections and controls on those objects.
Figure 4-6. zsqryProperties allows you to sort by any categories to view your property settings
Use the toolbar buttons to control sorting and filtering so that you can view only the properties you want for the objects in which you're interested.
For example, you might want to ensure that all command buttons on all your forms have their ControlTipText properties set. To do that, follow these steps (assuming you've followed the previous steps):
Open zsfrmVerifySettings and select all the forms in your application from the list of objects.
Click on the Document Selected Items button. Go out for lunch while it does its work.
Once it's finished, click on the View Results button, which brings up zsqryProperties, showing one row for each property of each object you selected. For a large set of forms or reports, this query could return tens of thousands of rows.
Choose Records → Filter → Advanced Filter/Sort and build a filter that sorts on Parent and limits the output to rows with "ControlTipText" in the PropName field and "Command Button" in the ObjectType field. Figure 4-7 shows this filter.
Figure 4-7. This filter limits rows to the ControlTipText property of command buttons
Apply the filter by clicking on the funnel button on the toolbar or by right-clicking on the filter design area and choosing Apply Filter/Sort. You will see only the rows for the command buttons' ControlTipText properties. Look for the rows in which there's no value in the PropValue column. Those are the buttons that don't yet have a value set. Figure 4-8 shows the output of the sample query. It's quite clear which buttons don't yet have their ControlTipText properties set.
Figure 4-8. The result query shows which buttons don't have their ControlTipText properties set
Discussion
To build the list of forms and reports, zsfrmVerifySettings borrows code from the example in the Solution in Recipe 4.2. Instead of looping through all the collections, however, it works only with the Forms and Reports collections. Otherwise, the mechanics of creating the list of objects are the same as in the Solution in Recipe 4.2; investigate that topic if you'd like more information on building the object inventory.
Creating the temporary tables and query
The Solution in Recipe 4.2 created a single table, zstblInventory, to hold the list of objects. In this case, however, you need three tables (zstblInventory for main objects, zstblSubObjects for objects on those forms or reports, and zstblProperties for property information). You also need a query (zsqryProperties) to join the three tables and display the output. The CreateTables function, shown here, uses DDL queries to create each of the necessary tables (see the Solution in Recipe 1.15 for more information on DDL queries) and DAO to create the query (see Chapter 6 for more information on using DAO):
Private Function CreateTables( ) As Boolean
' Return True on success, False otherwise.