MS Access™ MVP Awardee: 2007-2017
Blog: GPG on Access
Published Books:
Professional Access 2013 Programming with co-authors Teresa Hennig, Ben Clothier and Doug Yudovich. Grover Park George On Access MS Access™ in a SharePoint World with co-authors Tim Runcie and Ben Clothier.
When creating an Access database, you often use Access' built-in Message Box to communicate with your users. You also use the Input Box to solicit information from your users. You have little control over Input Boxes. You can specify the message text, title and position of the input box, and provide a default value. Not much more. However, you have a lot of control over Message Boxes: size, background clolor, font, font size and color, command buttons, message text and title , etc. This event function will display an input box to collect a name. Then it displays that name in three slightly different message boxes. Public Sub sSolicitInput() Dim strName As String strName = InputBox("Enter a Name", "New Name", "Washington") MsgBox "You entered """ & strName & """", vbQuestion MsgBox "The Name you entered is """ & strName & """", vbInformation + vbYesNo MsgBox "Are you sure you want to use """ & strName & """?", vbExclamation + vbYesNoCancel, "Here's Your Answer" End Sub Here's how a problem can occur: Most of the time, users will enter the expected value in the input box. Your database asks for a name, a number or other piece of information and the user provides it because they need it to complete their task. But sometimes, the user doesn't do the expected. Suppose the user responds to the input box by clicking "Cancel" instead of entering a name and clicking "OK". Instead of a value for the variable "strName", you'll end up with an emptry string from the input box. How do you handle such "unexpected" responses? Add a conditional statement to check for them, and take an appropriate action. Public Sub sSolicitInput() Dim strName As String strName = InputBox("Enter a Name", "New Name", "Washington") If strName <> "" Then MsgBox "You entered """ & strName & """", vbQuestion MsgBox "The Name you entered is """ & strName & """", vbInformation + vbYesNo MsgBox "Are you sure you want to use """ & strName & """?", vbExclamation + vbYesNoCancel, "Here's Your Answer" Else MsgBox "You did not enter a name. Please enter a name, or cancel the addition of this record.", vbInformation + vbOkOnly, "No Name Entered" End If End Sub This is only an example of the logic you'll use in your database. You will be doing something more complicated with the input string than simply using it to show a message back to the user.