Mysterious disappearance of buttons in form view

[j.mandala]

This had got to be something obvious that I am too blind to see!

Funny problem: one of my users has my application linked to a SQL
Server Backend. Front end it Access XP (SP3). The first form opened is
full of (about 25) buttons with a few fields on the form footer that
are filtered simply. It is called 'Switchboard' though it is not a
standard MS Access Switchboard. This person did the following:

Lengthened 2 strings from a table not related to the switchboard
Compacted and repaired the database front end
Refreshed the links to the SQL Server

When she next opened the 'Switchboard' the buttons in the 'Detail'
section were all nonexistent in form view, though they were still
there (could be seen in Design view). Oddly the buttons in the form
footer were visible, and they worked. She sees only the full sized
backgroup color where all the buttons were. There don't seem to be
invisble buttons in there.

Other clues:
a) any other form she opens from the database window looks and
works fine.
b) when she imports brand new working forms that I email her, they
also have invisible buttons, even though they work fine on my machine.
c) It doesn't seem to matter how she opens the form, via the
startup code or directly from the database window
d) She has tried linking and compact/repairing in various
combinations without improvement.
e) We compared all the form properties and database options between
our two machines and found no differences (Yes, the buttons are all
".visible = true").
f) All the udnerlying tables are readable.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. We are both stumped.

[Mark Reed]

I had a similar problem with a switchboard I created. It was mainly buttons
with one field. The form was bound to a query which most of the time
returned results but on this occasion returned none. Whilst there were no
results returned, everything on the form was invisible but was there in
design mode. Once I found the cause of the problem, I put the text box into
a subform and put the subform in the switchboard. Then, on the odd occasion
no results were returned, the text box only disappeared and the buttons
remained visible. It may not be the cause of your problem but it's worth a
look.

Mark

"j.mandala" <ma*****@rci.rutgers.edu> wrote in message
news:6c*************************@posting.google.co m...

This had got to be something obvious that I am too blind to see!

Funny problem: one of my users has my application linked to a SQL
Server Backend. Front end it Access XP (SP3). The first form opened is
full of (about 25) buttons with a few fields on the form footer that
are filtered simply. It is called 'Switchboard' though it is not a
standard MS Access Switchboard. This person did the following:

Lengthened 2 strings from a table not related to the switchboard
Compacted and repaired the database front end
Refreshed the links to the SQL Server

When she next opened the 'Switchboard' the buttons in the 'Detail'
section were all nonexistent in form view, though they were still
there (could be seen in Design view). Oddly the buttons in the form
footer were visible, and they worked. She sees only the full sized
backgroup color where all the buttons were. There don't seem to be
invisble buttons in there.

Other clues:
a) any other form she opens from the database window looks and
works fine.
b) when she imports brand new working forms that I email her, they
also have invisible buttons, even though they work fine on my machine.
c) It doesn't seem to matter how she opens the form, via the
startup code or directly from the database window
d) She has tried linking and compact/repairing in various
combinations without improvement.
e) We compared all the form properties and database options between
our two machines and found no differences (Yes, the buttons are all
".visible = true").
f) All the udnerlying tables are readable.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. We are both stumped.

[j.mandala]

Mark,

Thanks! That was exactly the problem. It turns out that she emptied
the table and also did not allow additions to the underlying SQL
table. After combing this newgroup I found a vaguely similar post from
1998. It turns out that:
1) You need to have something to display in the underlying
records
OR
2) You need to have the underlying recordset "allow additions"

Thanks for your helpful reply.

Sorry it took so long for me to reply to this, but I use Google Groups
to get to this newsgroup (my University stopped carrying newsgroups
because of the traffic), so I am limited to web access and Google
takes 3 to 6 hours to post my reply. I'm not sure why.