Using VBA for forms

[rbilney]

Hi,

I have just made a database and instead of having the form linked to the table with the record source option, I have left all the fields unbound, and used VB to get the field values and insert them into the tables.

Is that a common way of doing things? or just stupid? I have used VB in that way for almost everything, eg. By double clicking a name on a list, it populates the other fields with all the information from that item (including from relationships), for editing or deleting, etc.

Thanks,
Robin

[Stewart Ross]

I have just made a database and instead of having the form linked to the table with the record source option, I have left all the fields unbound, and used VB to get the field values and insert them into the tables.

Is that a common way of doing things? or just stupid? I have used VB in that way for almost everything, eg. By double clicking a name on a list, it populates the other fields with all the information from that item (including from relationships), for editing or deleting, etc.

Hi. Unless you need to dynamically alter the recordsource for a form etc (a rare occurrence) your approach is very labour-intensive - and in all honesty completely unnecessary. Access does all this stuff for you. You will also lose the ability to use much if not all of the in-built event processing and so on - so you further cut the functionality.

There may be some refinements where the approach is useful - as you will see from other posts in this forum - but these build on what Access provides in terms of form processing, and do not substitute for them altogether, which is what you are doing.

If you were using a back-end database such as SQL Server to store tables and VB to design forms etc your approach would be a good one - but in Access you are simply giving yourself loads of extra work... Sorry.

-Stewart