ACC97: Sample Procedure to Determine Current Page of Tab Control

• Microsoft Access 97

SUMMARY

Moderate: Requires basic macro, coding, and interoperability skills.

You can selectively run Visual Basic for Applications code based on the tabs that you select in a tab control. To ensure that a particular block of code is executed when you click on a particular tab, use a Select Case statement with the Change event of the tab control itself, instead of using the Click event of the particular page.

In a tab control, a tab contains a page, but it is not actually part of the page itself. Therefore, the Click event of a page occurs when you click on the body of page, but it does not occur when you click on the page's corresponding tab. However, the Change event occurs every time you click on a different tab. You can then use the Select Case statement to direct the flow of your code so that it depends on the index of the current page. The Value property of a tab control returns the current page's index.

This article assumes that you are familiar with Visual Basic for Applications and with creating Microsoft Access applications using the programming tools provided with Microsoft Access. For more information about Visual Basic for Applications, please refer to the "Building Applications with Microsoft Access 97" manual.

NOTE: A demonstration of the technique used in this article can be seen in the sample file, FrmSmp97.exe. For information about how to obtain this sample file, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q175066
   TITLE     : ACC97: Microsoft Access 97 Sample Forms Available on MSL

MORE INFORMATION

CAUTION: Following the steps in this example will modify the sample database Northwind.mdb. You may want to back up the Northwind.mdb file and perform these steps on a copy of the database.

1. Start Microsoft Access and open the sample database Northwind.mdb.

2. Open the Employees form in Design view.

3. To select the tab control, click the drop-down arrow in the leftmost box on the formatting toolbar and select TabCtl0.

4. On the View menu, click Properties, and then click the Event tab.

5. Click to place the pointer in the OnChange box; then click the Build button and select Code Builder.

6. Set the OnChange property of the tab control to the following procedure:

         Private Sub TabCtl0_Change()
            Select Case Me!TabCtl0.Value ' Returns Page Index.
               Case 0  ' Page Index for Page 1.
                  MsgBox "You have selected Company Info"
               Case 1  ' Page Index for Page 2.
                   MsgBox "You have selected Personal Info"
            End Select
         End Sub
   
   

7. Close the module and the property sheet.

8. On the View menu, click Form view.

9. Click the Personal Info tab, and note that the following message appears:

         You have selected Personal Info.
   

   Then click the Company Info tab, and note that the following message appears:

         You have selected Company Info.
   

REFERENCES

For more information about the using Select Case to control program flow, search the Help Index for "Select Case statement."

For more information about the Tab control, search the Help Index for "tab controls," or ask the Microsoft Access 97 Office Assistant.