Visible record selection in continuous form (Not using record selector)

[TheSmileyCoder]

I have a situation in which the user is requested to select a new status for the document they are working on.

As the document status is somewhat complicated, it consists of 3 fields:
tbl_DocStatus:
PK_Status (Primary Key, Autonumber)
tx_Status (Text 25, short status)
tx_StatusDescri ption (Text 255, long description of what the status means)

Now the 255 characters of the description is to long in my opinion to properly show in a listbox, so I want to display a popup form, which in style looks like the image I have attached:
[IMGnothumb]http://bytes.com/attachments/attachment/6758d1354874728/selectstatus.jp g[/IMGnothumb]

Just ignore the text, its danish :)

Now I would like for the user to be able to use the radio button (or similar) for selecting the new status. But of course since this is unbound, selecting 1 radio button selects them all.

Does anyone have a good way of indicating in a continues form which record is the selected one? I do realize that access comes with a built in record selector but I find it so darn ugly, and want it to be hidden.

[NeoPa]

Unless you want to use the Format event, you need to ensure the table has a boolean field so you can bind the control (It can be a Radio Button.) to it and show it in the form. Let me know if this is not adequate. I believe I've seen suggestions somewhere for showing different values in unbound controls in spite of Why Values in Unbound Form Controls do not Persist.

[TheSmileyCoder]

I don't see the option of adding a boolean field to the table itself, as it is a shared table from the backend. It "could" in theory be moved and saved as a local table without too much trouble, except for the fact that I would need to update the client in order to make any changes to the table.

Your suggestion did however give me an idea I will try out, using a join to a selection table. I will try it and report back (of course :O)

[NeoPa]

That's where my thinking led too Smiley. If it proves fruitful we may have a decent and reusable concept on our hands ;-)

PS. I'm out now till Sunday probably, but will pick up on my return.

[TheSmileyCoder]

I created an extra table:
tbl_Selection
ID (Long)
bSelect (Long)

I then left joined it to the original table on ID=PK_Status, and bound the bSelect to the radio button. Voila, I can now select 1 or more records. Of course now comes some extra overhead with clearing the tbl_Selection when the form opens, and possibly some code to handle whether or not multiselect is allowed, but that should be manageble.

Thank you for the inspiration NeoPa.

[TheSmileyCoder]

So this is how my custom record selector ended up looking. I will try to post in more details how it is accomplished when I get the chance. For now I just wanted to show it off:

[NeoPa]

Good work Smiley :-)

Remember though, if you want to be able to reuse the table generically across multiple forms then you may also need to introduce a job or form identifier into the table ;-) That way data for more than one form can be maintained simultaneously without the two sets of data interfering with each other.