=?Utf-8?B?Q2hyaXM=?= said:
I am attemptign to figure out HOW to create wizards for user guidance withing Access. I have searched the help files and even done some light reading in the Office XP Dev Guide - to no avail.
Everything says it can be done and that it is really useful, bu nothing actually tells me HOW TO MAKE A WIZARD. What steps must I take, etc.
Anyon point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
Chris
Hi Chris. You can also create "wizards", small w, by using a panel with
a subform control, and stepping through a script of subforms one by one,
allowing user input, and then at the end you execute your wizard
process. I've built such things for various purposes, so it's
definitely doable. The main things you have to worry about are: where
the wizard gets its script (hard-coded variable is easiest but least
flexible, and IME wizards tend to need to get flexible pretty quickly),
where the data from each subform is stored until the job is ready for
execution (job repository).
Realize that a wizard isn't really anything qualitatively different
(IMO) from a panel that, for example, displays a record from a database
when you enter an ID number, which is an extremely simple one-panel
wizard. The trick is to plan the user input over several screens, and
perhaps to allow for decision making by your process between screens,
based on input, user permissions, whatever you can think of. Classes
are definitely useful for this as the logic hub. (Actually, if you're
interested, I'll post some code I've written; but I have to warn you,
it's a real mess, that's not a joke. Needs serious redesign and
rewrite.)
spark
