Conditional Formatting for Image box on Continuous Forms

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Costa Zu

Hello again,

This problem is driving me crazy. I am a car enthusiast and love
taking photos of classic cars. I have a table which describes the
make and model in a series of fields. There are several fields that
contain a reference to photos of those cars. Ie: the fields are
called "Front" "Side" "Rear" "Angle". My form has four image boxes to
display the images stored in these fields. But when I open the form
all the records show the images of the first car only.

I asked about this a few days ago and was advised to check out
http://www.lebans.com/conditionalformatting.htm however this appears
to relate to conditional formatting of TextBoxes using classes. I
would appreciate someone giving me a little more detail on how to deal
with images in this regard. I have just upgraded to Access 2007.
Unfortunately I asked this question late last year and was advised
that images could be bound to field data in 2007 - that is the only
reason I upgraded.

I would REALLY appreciate some help on this one.

Cheers

Costa
 
C

Costa Zu

Hello,

This is still driving me crazy.

I am trying to create a continuous subform down the right hand side of
my main form. The subform simply contains a list of thumbnails that I
want to display in a continuous form. I used to have a tall skinny
subform that just scrolled up and down, but now my list is too long
for the maximum height.

When I created the continuous subform the image displayed in each
record defaulted to that of the current record. Advice that I've
received here does not seem to have helped. This is the advice that I
have received to date:

1.
Advice: Upgrade to 2007 because that will do what I want to do.
Action: I upgraded. Bad advice. Images are treated the same as in
2003. Ie: that doesn't work.

2.
Advice: Use MSFLXGRD.OCX and look at
http://www.lebans.com/conditionalformatting.htm
Action: Great idea! I can see the demo. I want to do something
similar to the thing with the flags. However, when I try to add the
control to my form I get the following message:

"You dont have the licence required to use this ActiveX control"

Now what do I do?

Geez! My problem is simple ... give me an Image control that works
the same way as a text box in a continuous form. i.e: displays the
image associated with the right record. Is there no one else in the
world who wants to do this? I am at a total loss and extremely
disappointed with MS and MS Access.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks

Costa
 
P

Peter Hibbs

Costa

Don't panic, it is possible.

What you need to do is have a field for each image in your table. Make
the field types OLE Object and insert then into your Continuous form.
Then you can just copy and paste your images into the relevant fields
when the form is displayed. I think the only problem with this method
is that the images are stored within the database file so if you have
a large number of large images (in KB that is) the file could be quite
large. Northwind database uses this method to show Employee images on
a form (although not a Continuous form in this case).

I suggest you try that method first. If you have a large number of
images you can also do the insert image part using some VBA code but
that is a bit more complicated.

HTH

Peter Hibbs.
 
C

Costa Zu

Peter,

Thanks for the advice. I used the Attachment method in Access 2007
and it is working fine. As I am only dealing with thumbnails I don't
mind the objects being stored in the database. When I click on the
thumbnail it takes the main form to the record selected. The main
form uses Image controls to load the images to display.

I would still like to know how to license the MSFLXGRD.OCX though,
because I will be needing to display a matrix of images later.

Thanks for your help,

Costa
 
C

Costa Zu

Hi Peter, again,

I'm implementing my sub-form with Attachments as a continuous form but
an interesting thing has occurred when I inserted the form into my
main form:- only the current record is displaying in the sub-form. I
think this might have something to do with linking the master fields
and child fields.

Basically, the sub-form works as a vertical scroll bar showing all the
different records in a continuous form. The main form displays a
detailed record of the current record selected in the sub-form.
However, the sub-form is now also only displaying the current record
in the continuous form ... ie: 1 picture.

Any advice?

I think this may be because I haven't set up my Access 2007 Options
properly yet. In that regard, I hope the next version of Office at
least GIVES YOU THE OPTION of using traditional menus or the ribbon.

Regards

Costa.
 
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Peter Hibbs

Hi Costa,

Firstly, I don't have Access 2007 so I cannot help if there are
problems that are specific to this version of Access.

I am some trouble visualising your set up, do you have two tables, one
for the main form and one for the subform with a 1 - Many
relationship. It sounds to me as if you have the main form AND the
subform bound to the same table, I don't think that will work. I
created a Continuos type form with several OLE Object fields and
embedded that in another form and it works fine. I think you must be
doing something wrong there.

Regarding the Flex Grid control, I got it by installing Visual Studio
6 which has Visual Basic 6, Visual J++ and Visual C++ 6, if you can
find a (cheap) copy of this software then that will give you the
necessary License. You may also be able to purchase the control direct
from Microsoft but I don't know how or how much it would cost to do
this.

Alternatively, you could try using the VideoSoft FlexGrid control
which I believe may come with Access, it shows up as :) VideoSoft
FlexArray Control in the list of ActiveX controls. This control is
compatible with the Microsoft version but has a few more useful
facilities like being able to edit cells directly. However, you still
need to pay for it to use it properly. Whenever you open a form with a
VideoSoft grid control you get a message popping up telling you to pay
for the software, if you can live with that then I suppose you could
use it for free. I have not purchased one of these so I have no idea
how much it costs.

Another possiblity is to import a form with a Flex Grid control on it
into your project from my demo database and then modify the form and
code to suit your requirements. However, as I mentioned in the
documentation, this may corrupt your database file so make sure you
make a back up copy before attempting this. Other users have said that
this mehod works OK with no problems so it may work for you.

Hope that helps.

Peter Hibbs.
 
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Costa Zu

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your advice. I've made more headway in the last 2 days
than I did in the previous 2 weeks! Your comments are truely
appreciated.

I created a query and pointed the sub-form to that, which solved the
problem of the wrong records displaying.

I have heard that Visual Studio Express also contains the license for
the Flex Grid control. VSE is free, so I am going to give that a go.

Thanks for your help.

Regards

Costa.
 
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Peter Hibbs

Hi Costa

We would be interested to hear if the Visual Studio Express edition
has a License to use the Flex Grid control. I downloaded the Visual
Basic 2005 Express version which did not have it, hopefully VSE does.
If you get it working perhaps you would be kind enough to post back
and let us know the results as a lot of other programmers will be
interested.

Thank you.

Peter Hibbs.
 
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