Conditional Formating Disappearing Act

[Earl Anderson]

A business colleague and I are collaborating 'long distance' on an applet
for work. He is doing the programming and I am doing the business process
form design. We had discussed my desire to make all of the textbox fields
with the 'focus' become a 'light orange' in backcolor. He is working in
A2k3/WinXP and I am working in A2002/WinXP (The users of the applet have
A2k3). In our preliminary discussions about this particular enhancement, he
formatted one of the forms ([frm_TestForm]) as a 'test' to understand
exactly what I wanted. In an effort to 'share the load', we decided that I
would do the conditional formatting to achieve the 'light orange' backcolor
in all of the forms of the applet.

After he placed the "Applet.mdw ", "Applet_Backend .mdb", "Applet.mdb " and the
"Applet Icon" shortcut file in a network folder for me to work with, I
copied those files (thru VPN) to my a folder on my "C:\Program Files". I
then went thru each form in 'Design View' and conditionally formatted each
textbox to the desired backcolor, saving each before moving on to the next
form. I did notice that his [frm_TestForm] was already formatted from when
he did it previously. After 2 hours (off & on) in completing this mundane
formatting task, I then copied the same 4 files from my "Program Files" and
pasted them back into a separate/different folder on the network (thru VPN)
so that he could retrieve them and continue on with his work with the newly
formatted forms in the applet. (I sent them to a separate/different folder
on the network so that these files would not be confused with the same ones
I copied initially from the network.)

To our mutual astonishment and frustration, none, absolutely none of the
forms that I had formatted (that's all but [frm_TestForm]) had retained the
'light orange' backcolor formatting when he opened them. However, the
[frm_TestForm] he had formatted originally was still formatted in 'light
orange'.

I apologize for the long explanation, but I wanted to present all of the
facts and factors involved, before I ask the question--Does anyone know and
can explain why my conditional formatting disappeared from the 'pasted'
files (actually, it should have been only the "Applet.mdb " that was at
issue)? The only thing I can fathom is that we were working in different
versions of Access. I really do not want to buy A2k3 to test that theory.

Thanks for listening (reading) and bearing with me...
Earl

[Salad]

Re: Conditional Formating Disappearing Act

Earl Anderson wrote:

A business colleague and I are collaborating 'long distance' on an applet
for work. He is doing the programming and I am doing the business process
form design. We had discussed my desire to make all of the textbox fields
with the 'focus' become a 'light orange' in backcolor. He is working in
A2k3/WinXP and I am working in A2002/WinXP (The users of the applet have
A2k3). In our preliminary discussions about this particular enhancement, he
formatted one of the forms ([frm_TestForm]) as a 'test' to understand
exactly what I wanted. In an effort to 'share the load', we decided that I
would do the conditional formatting to achieve the 'light orange' backcolor
in all of the forms of the applet.
>
After he placed the "Applet.mdw ", "Applet_Backend .mdb", "Applet.mdb " and the
"Applet Icon" shortcut file in a network folder for me to work with, I
copied those files (thru VPN) to my a folder on my "C:\Program Files". I
then went thru each form in 'Design View' and conditionally formatted each
textbox to the desired backcolor, saving each before moving on to the next
form. I did notice that his [frm_TestForm] was already formatted from when
he did it previously. After 2 hours (off & on) in completing this mundane
formatting task, I then copied the same 4 files from my "Program Files" and
pasted them back into a separate/different folder on the network (thru VPN)
so that he could retrieve them and continue on with his work with the newly
formatted forms in the applet. (I sent them to a separate/different folder
on the network so that these files would not be confused with the same ones
I copied initially from the network.)
>
To our mutual astonishment and frustration, none, absolutely none of the
forms that I had formatted (that's all but [frm_TestForm]) had retained the
'light orange' backcolor formatting when he opened them. However, the
[frm_TestForm] he had formatted originally was still formatted in 'light
orange'.
>
I apologize for the long explanation, but I wanted to present all of the
facts and factors involved, before I ask the question--Does anyone know and
can explain why my conditional formatting disappeared from the 'pasted'
files (actually, it should have been only the "Applet.mdb " that was at
issue)? The only thing I can fathom is that we were working in different
versions of Access. I really do not want to buy A2k3 to test that theory.
>
Thanks for listening (reading) and bearing with me...
Earl
>
>

The question is...do the files on your system have the changes? If they
do, did you copy the correct files back to his system?

Here's a quick and dirty method to do if you need to redo your efforts.
I created a module with the following code.

Public Function SetTheColor(frm As Form, strOnOff As String) As Boolean
'set the background when you get focus to black,
'white when you lose focus
Dim strFld As String
strFld = frm.ActiveContr ol.Name
frm(strFld).Bac kColor = IIf(strOnOff = "On", 0, 16777215)
SetTheColor = True
End Function

I create a form called Form1 and dropped in 4 text boxes. I then
highlighted/selected all 4 text boxes and entered into the GotFocus event
=SetTheColor([Forms]![Form1],"ON")
and
=SetTheColor([Forms]![Form1],"OFF")
into the LostFocus event.

I wanted to pass Me as the from argument but I couldn't get that to
work. Anyway, if you changed Form1 to whatever the name of the form is
to the name of your form you have in design mode you could do it over
pretty quick.

Then save your form then reopen it and verify the code stuck. I would
also verify you don't have any got/lost focus events in the form prior
to doing this.