Programming CONTROLTIPTEXT Property

[Lightning]

Hi Gang!

Does anyone know of a way to display a control's ControlTipText through code?

For various reasons, I need to display additional information for each control on a form. I need to ensure that any user who uses the TAB or ENTER keys to move through the controls also sees this information.

I can't use the Taskbar, as the information needs to be EXTREMELY obvious to users who do not know a lot about Access. The ControlTipText property would be great, IF I can get it to pop up whenever a control has the focus, and not just when the mouse is moved over the control.

I've checked the on-line help, but can't find anything on this topic. Has anyone had to do anything like this, or can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance!

Lightning

 

[ghubbell]

Hi Lightning, I don't find it anywhere either. I might suggest though, having the backcolor change as each field is entered, the control tip text, something pointing the user to the status bar on each move (a nifty label perhaps).

How about a help form: a pop up, not too big, one well sized label for the text and a little one for the field name, and as each field gets focus you change the label caption to suit. Bonus to this is you could give the user the option to use it or not: I doused some forms with CTT and later had to remove them as users became tired of dodging to see other fields. Get more exotic and add the check box "don't show me this again." but for the initial runs, have it start with the form.

Next to that....a real help file?! Ideas... Gord
ghubbell@total.net

 

[Lightning]

Thanks Gord

I had considered the popup form solution, but the client doesn't want "things appearing and disappearing all over the place"!! And unfortunately I don't have access to a help compiler.

Oh Well, if it can't be done, it can't be done! They may have to put up with "things appearing and disappearing all over the place".

Thanks again.
Lightning

 

[BoxHead]

A couple of thoughts: You can set your control tip text for the Form's OnCurrent event. This is nice if you have long text and want to have it displayed in multiple lines instead of the fortune cookie look. Still, these blocks of text do get in the way pretty often.

You could use the right click event on any control to display a help message for that control. Then, your controltiptext would be: "Right-Click for Help."

 

[BlackKnight]

Hi,

Control tips inheritantly appear and disappear all over the place so this behavior cannot be avoided. One weay to simulate the tips is to put a label on your form. Make it invisible. In the mouse move event of each control you can set its caption, make it visible, and set its left, top properties to a the control's position plus some offset to get it out of the way. This worked very well in Visual Basic 3 before tooltips were ever invented.

The other option if that isn't to your liking would be a popup window that could be called from a rightclick on the control. You would put the code to make the popup appear in your on click event of each control. You could also store all of your help messages in a table which could then use a control's tag property to hold a search id#. The on keypess event can simply call the on click event whenever <Tab> or <Enter> is pressed.

Have a good one!
BK

 

[Lightning]

Thanks for the ideas, people. At least I have some ideas I can work with, now.

Lightning