Friday afternoon Combobox Riddle

[SilverBean]

What a way to spend a Friday afternoon.

Access 2000 format DB runing fine on several XP machines continuing to run fine on all but 1. This user seems to have better monitor than the other 3 - but I don't think this is a display font issue. The problem is combo box will not show items (items are not visible). Oddly enough user is able to scroll and select items -- items are there!

Manually enter entries for the Combo box and they appear fine keeping the default Font Tahoma, 8 pt I believe. Change to use a Query or table items go away.

I think I'm seeing that Combo boxes using a Rowsoure of a table or query exhibit this problem, but I can't believe its a systemic problem like that -- any gueses appreciated.

 

[lewds]

Hi..

Look at the properties of the combobox and see what column it is displaying.

 

[missinglinq]

You say ACC2000 format but you don't what version of Access is running, and I'm going to guess ACC2003 with the new, horrendous update SP3 installed. From Allen Browne's site:

New bugs in SP3 for Access 2003

1. The combo goes blank if it's RowSource is a table field that has something in its Format property.

2. Access crashes when you assign a table with more than 31 fields to the RowSource of a combo

This is one of many problems that have been reported with this service pack! Micro$oft is working on the problem but no word yet as to when we'll see a patch. Fortunately, if this is your problem, it has a simple workaround; go into the table and remove any formatting for the field.

The Missinglinq

Richmond, Virginia

There's ALWAYS more than one way to skin a cat!

 

[SilverBean]

Yep SP3 casualty here. Thanks for the confirmation.

 

[missinglinq]

Having done this for a lot of years, I never upgrade to a new version of any major app until it's been out there for two years or more, and I never install a service pack until it's been out there for 6 months!



The Missinglinq

Richmond, Virginia

There's ALWAYS more than one way to skin a cat!

 

[SilverBean]

Agreed.....on both counts. Personally myself I'm fine with Windows 2000 at home, so talk about reluctant to upgrade. I'm actually wearing a QA hat nowadays but they take advantage of my past experiences whenever they can. IT has been notified as to their policies for upgrading its up to them to enforce - I'm just dealing with what's in front of me. As for the other point remove the ">" yea that was a simple work around. Actually didn't need it I "thought" I was forcing Caps but turns out I was using UCase in some areas and even ConvStr(XXX,vbUpperCase) in some others. I had been working with memo fields so I probably got scared into thinking either of these string functions might truncate fields>255 but everything looks ok now and no more ">" which was redundant in hind site.

Actually BTW: The original problem was not confined to combo boxes, but also list boxes too.

HOWEVER, next problem. Looks like if I have a query which uses an expression this also makes the list box or combo box entries disappear. This is a tough/ pride kind of thing. Got a really nice design where I use a query and make an address all nicey nice with commas, optional address if present, and then an ID in a second column. I bind to the second column and my user gets a nice display in a listbox......my NON SP3 users that is. Any suggested work arounds to this?

You mention format 2000, any chance if I went to the 2002-2003 format I wouldn't be effected by SP3 as much. I'm not actually how many of these surprises are waiting for me. And at this point 2002-2003 format is probably ok to use

 

[missinglinq]

Don't think so! Just mentioned that because I figured you were running ACC2003; that particular problem is the most commonly reported one. Most anything affecting combo boxes will affect listboxes. From what I hear (I didn't do the update) the only answer until a patch is issued is to uninstall Access and re-install up to SP2!

BTW, until a month ago, I was doing fine with Windows 98SE!

Hopefully Micro$oft will be putting out something soon!

Good luck!

Linq

The Missinglinq

Richmond, Virginia

There's ALWAYS more than one way to skin a cat!

 

[SilverBean]

Just for clarity and fairness: Looks like my However problem was a lingering ">" that I forgot to remove

 

[missinglinq]

Yep! > is a formatting thingie, too! Actually, that's the most reported cause of this particular problem!

The Missinglinq

Richmond, Virginia

There's ALWAYS more than one way to skin a cat!