Yes. You'll want to investigate the TreeView control.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cmctl198/html/vbobjtreeview.asp
If you're building a Switchboard using it you obviously won't
neccessarily need to pull the data from a table, however doing so will
make thing easier in terms of maintenance.
Take note of the following...
-Each node.key value MUST be unique across the entire tree, not just
within children under the same parent. If you're using Autonumber to
create Id's for each record, its possible that a parent & child could
have the same key in the table. For example, if both the parent & child
were the first record in their respective tables (tblClients,
tblInvoices) this would cause a problem. (The next item can help with
this...)
-Each node.key MUST contain at least 1 letter. Because of the issue
above, in one particular TreeView that I have the node.key's have the
following scheme
CL:8
MA:8
ID:8
CL designates the record as a Client record
MA designates the record as a Master Account
ID designates the record as an invoice.
8 is the recordId in the respective underlying tables. This is all
independt of the underlying data and used to ensure unique keys in the
TV control. Since I've setup the prefix to always be 3 characters, the
following formula extract the value for the recordID for use in working
with the record. Mid(Node.Key, 4, Len(Node.Key) - 3)
-The information in the TreeView control DOES NOT have to relate. By
that I mean, you can have a three parent nodes - CUSTOMERS, VENDORS, and
EMPLOYEES. Think of this as a box on your desk that just happens to have
three different folders. They're there for simply for convinence. While
this may not sound useful, one use for it would be a telephone directory
where the telephone numbers exist in three different tables and you want
to bring the data all together.
-In keeping with the last item, the nodes can be setup to perform
different actions based on the value of the NODE.TAG and NODE.KEY. On my
invoicing form, under each CLIENT, I immediately display a child node
labeled NEW INVOICE. Clicking on this node creates a new invoice. Below
the NEW INVOICE node as sibling, I've listed the various client
invoices. Clicking on a client invoice displays the invoice.
-To put a nice litte image next to the text in the TreeView Control. Add
an ImageControl to the form and load it with the various images. (Look
in the toolBox under MORE CONTROLS (look for the button with the
elipses..). Think of the ImageControl as a holder for the various images
for use by the TV control. I doesn't display on the form at run. Once
created, you'll need to go into the TV control properties and set the
ImageList property to the name of the ImageList control that you
created. Since you're adding images, you'll need to find some images,
try ICON SEARCHER (
http://www.icontool.com). The app looks for icons
already on your PC - IT"S WAAYYYYY COOOOLLL.
David H
