Access Form layout and design: Header: How do I make my header section look like Google - forms

I would like to rip off Google's design for my Continuous Form. The detail section of the form is set up to display N number of records resulting from a search, and thus cannot be used to create this effect (i think). Everything must go in the header section.
there are 2 primary issues I would like to address in this question:
Two toned background. The header section should have a grey stripe and a white stripe. This stripe needs to extend the full width of the form, which is variable and will depend on the user. (i'm using tabs not pop-ups)
How to right justify certain elements of the header so that they stay close to the right edge, wherever that may fall, just like your account information on Google.
The "Search Results" in the detail section are loaded by setting the form's recordSource to the results of a query defined in VBA, which takes parameters from the search box. The form is continuous.
Any ideas how to hack this into place?

Recent versions of MS Access provide improved form layout features when using the ACCDB database file format.
The screen captures below are based on a form in Access 2010. The second image is after the form width was expanded, but it's scaled down for display on this web page. However you can open those images directly to compare their relative widths.
The grey color is from the form header's Back Color property. The white box is a simple text box whose Back Color is white and Back Style is Normal (not Transparent).
The text box's Horizontal Anchor property is Both, and its Can Grow property is Yes. The other 3 items ("?", "Button 2", and "Button 3") are command buttons. Their Horizontal Anchors are set to Right and their Can Grow properties are No.
The result of those properties is that when the form expands, those command buttons maintain their size are are kept right-aligned within the form. And the text box stretches to fill the remaining available space.
Note this behavior is accomplished without any VBA code.
I think these layout capabilities were introduced in Access 2007 and perhaps refined in 2010.

For the background, use two rectangles with transparent borders, one back color gray, one white. You can size them to the form by using the form's InsideWidth property. For example:
Private Sub Form_Resize()
rect1.Width = Me.InsideWidth
rect2.Width = Me.InsideWidth
End Sub
I would do a similar thing for the buttons/images/etc you want right justified. Set their Left property relative to the form's width:
mySettingsButton.Left = Me.InsideWidth - 300
Keep in mind all the measurements are twips (1440 twips/inch)

Related

Can access display multiline captions in Access 365 form datasheet view?

I have read about using VBA to concatenate terms together using VbCrLf; I personally used Ctrl-Enter to create a second line in the caption field in the properties box.
But, after I do my ctrl-enter, it then only shows the first line of my multi-line caption in the datasheet view of my form.
becomes this...
This form is meant to recreate the functionality our owner is looking for from a current excel spreadsheet (the ability to sort on various columns), so I can't just use a report.
Please tell me I'm missing something obvious such as a caption height property value or something. The multiline caption will be very useful to help maintain appropriate column widths for the data.
Whilst you can display multiple lines of content within the datasheet view for a table by increasing the row height of each record, e.g.:
A more appropriate solution might be to use a text box on a form to display the data, where the height of the text box can be predefined in the design of the form, and scroll bars can be displayed:
There is no solution to adjusting column headers in the specific "datasheet" form that I was trying to use. It's a nice quick way that works for 95% of your uses. But, if you need more control (like me and others on the internet) the only solution is to create the form as a "Tabular" form in the form wizard. There are other descriptions of this type of form in Access (just to be confusing).
This is also described as a continuous form likely because that's the form property value toggle when you dive into the details.
It's more work but you have full control over the size, format, etc. of your column headers when creating/designing a tabular form.

Visio: Creating Automatic Numbered Label

I'm currently working on creating a new stencil for several components I use in Visio and I'm stuck at the point of providing proper labels. If you use a resistor from Visio stencil it automatically generates a label "R1" (for first resistor) and "Rk" for the kth resistor. How can I do something similar for my own stencil ?
1- I need to generate a label "ABCD #" (# number automatically generated based on instance count)
2- How can I position the location of this field?
PS:
1- Visio components have a custom defined field which allows for this (which I don't know how to create)
2- For capacitor for example the shapesheet shows an interesting entry
=SETF(GetRef(User.Label),"""C""&"&ThePage!User.AccumulatorCount)&SETF(GetRef(ThePage!User.AccumulatorCount),ThePage!User.AccumulatorCount+1)
which supposedly is how the count and name are generated (I'm not sure how the AccumulatorCount is defined it differs from element to element).
Thank You!
The EventDrop ShapeSheet cells for various electrical shapes have formulas similar to the one you have discovered:
SETF(GetRef(User.Label),"""C""&"&ThePage!User.AccumulatorCount)&SETF(GetRef(ThePage!User.AccumulatorCount),ThePage!User.AccumulatorCount+1)
The ShapeSheet for the page has a cell: User.AccumulatorCount for capacitors. Other User cells will be added as other shapes are dropped. You can set up your own system by adding a User cell to the page, say: User.Widget. Then you place the "Widget" version of the "SETF" formula into your own shapes.
You can create user cells by:
Open the ShapeSheet for the Page (right-click blank area of page, Show ShapeSheet)
Right-click in ShapeSheet and choose Add Section
Add a User-defined cells section
Find the User-defined cells section and similarly add rows to it via
right-clicking
You change the row names by typing over the red, row-name text on the left.
You enter values and formulas in the cells as you would in Excel.
You can toggle viewing formulas vs. viewing values by pressing F5
while in the ShapeSheet.
You have to make the User cell in the page first, so that your shape can reference it. Once your shape references the page cell, you can drag your shape into a stencil, and it will "drag the page User cell along too". So now, you can drop your Widget shape into a new document, and it will create the page User cell on the fly.
The system is basic and fragile. The count only goes up, and never down. If you have shapes with 1, 2, 3, 4 and you delete 1 and 2, the next shape will still be 5.

Bokeh - How to use box tool without default selections?

I have built a bokeh app that allows users to select windows in data and run python code to find and label (with markers) extreme values within these limits. For ease of interaction, I use the box select tool for the range selection. My problem arises when repeating this process for subsequent cases. After markers are placed for the results, they are rendered invisible by setting alpha to zero and another case needs to be chosen. When the new select box includes previous markers, they become visible based on the selection. How do I override this default behavior? Can markers be made unselectable? or can I add code to the customJS to hide them after they are selected?
Thanks in advance for any help!
There are a few possible approaches. If you just want non-selected glyphs to "disappear" visually, you can set a policy to do that as described here:
http://docs.bokeh.org/en/latest/docs/user_guide/styling.html#selected-and-unselected-glyphs
Basically, for bokeh.plotting, pass
nonselection_fill_alpha=0.0,
nonselection_line_alpha=0.0,
as arguments to your plot.circle call or whatever. Or if you are using the low level bokeh.models interface, something like:
renderer.nonselection_glyph = Circle(fill_alpha=0.0, line_alpha=0.0)
But be aware (I think you already are) that the invisible markers are still there, and still selectable if the user happens to draw a box over them with the selection tool.
If you truly want only a subset of the data to be visible and selectable after a selection, I'd say you want to replace the data in the column data source wholesale with the subset in your selection callback.

stretch a textField to a max height in jasper reports

I think this is more of a general issue. I would like to use a textfield that gets dynamic data and doesn't stretch more than a given max height. For instance, I have a textfield that, if it gets text that fits in one line, the textfield will be one line height, and i have other elements under it, that will move up with float positioning. Or, if I want a 3 line max height and if the text exceeds that space, then the rest will be trimmed.
I don't want to use java expressions to trim that text, as it is not always accurate. I am new to jasper and I am trying to know if there is any way to do this. I did a lot of searches, but maybe there is something that i missed, and i hope someone can help me. Thank you
I managed to solve this by extending net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.TextMeasurer and overriding initialize() method; also I had to extend net.sf.jasperreports.engine.util.AbstractTextMeasurerFactory and override the createMeasurer() method.
Now, whenever I want to have max # of lines, with no overflow, I add a property to that text field (e.g. maxLines) which is being passed to my custom TextMeasurerFactory. I hope this helped you.
We had a similar problem at work with JASPER Reports 4.5, where we had an invoice with a header and a table. We wanted the header to have dynamic height based on the lengths of certain fields (like address, partner name, etc,), but not more than a critical limit, otherwise the header will push the table and thus making a mess by splitting it across multiple pages. Also, the invoice shouldn't exceed 1 page.
We eventually had to move the header in the background section, where we also put a background for the table consisting of vertical lines (so it will extend to the end of an A4 page) and a white opaque square.
This way, if the header exceeds the max height it will go underneath the table's background, cropping the text. This was the desired effect we were looking for.
Sounds crazy, but it worked ...

Text not fitting into form fields (iTextSharp)

I created a .PDF file using Adobe Acrobat Pro. The file has several text fields. Using iTextSharp, I'm able to populate all the fields and mail out the .PDF.
One thing is bugging me - some of the next will not "fit" in the textbox. In Adobe, if I type more that the allocated height, the scroll bar kicks in - this happens when font size is NOT set to auto and multi-line is allowed.
However, when I attempt to set the following properties:
//qSize is float and set to 15;
//auto size of font is not being set here.
pdfFormFields.SetFieldProperty("notification_desc", "textsize", qSize, null);
// set multiline
pdfFormFields.SetFieldProperty("notification_desc", "setfflags", PdfFormField.FF_MULTILINE, null);
//fill the field
pdfFormFields.SetField("notification_desc", complaintinfo.OWNER_DESC);
However upon compilation and after stamping, the scroll bar does not appear in the final .PDF.
I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do. I'm thinking that perhaps I should create a table and flood it with the the text but the documentation makes little or no reference to scroll bars....
When you flatten a document, you remove all interactivity. Expecting working scroll bars on a flattened form, is similar to expecting working scroll bars on printed paper. That's why you don't get a lot of response to your question: it's kind of absurd.
When you fill out a rectangle with text, all text that doesn't fit will be omitted. That's why some people set the font size to 0. In this case, the font size will be adapted to make the text fit. I don't know if that's an option for you as you clearly state that the font size must be 15 pt.
If you can't change the font size, you shouldn't expect the AcroForm form field to adapt itself to the content. ISO-32000-1 is clear about that: the coordinates of a text field are fixed.
Your only alternative is to take control over how iText should fill the field. I made an example showing how to do this in the context of my book: MovieAds.java/MovieAds.cs. In this example, I ask the field for its coordinates:
AcroFields.FieldPosition f = form.GetFieldPositions(TEXT)[0];
This object gives you the page number f.page and a Rectangle f.position. You can use these variables in combination with ColumnText to add the content exactly the way you want to (and to check if all content has been added).
I hope you understand that:
it's only normal that there are no scroll bars on a flattened form,
the standard way of filling out fields clips content that doesn't fit,
you need to do more programming if you want a custom result.
For more info: please consult "iText in Action - Second Edition".