Question

I have a Access 2003 database that will dynamically load MDB databases as a library reference. The reason for this is this database is a menu front-end for 60+ application databases. Rather than deal with permanently referencing all these databases, the menu front-end will dynamically reference what is needed when the user makes a selection. I was working on moving this database to Access 2010 and creating a custom ribbon. I started using the technique from here to capture the ribbon object in a global variable when the ribbon loads. I then ran into the problem where I could verify the code was running and the global variable was correctly being assigned the ribbon reference but after the database would run through it’s startup routine, that global variable would get reset to Nothing.

To verify what was going on, I created a simple database for testing. In this database, I had a module with a global variable:

Public obj as Object

I then had a function like this:

Public Function SetObj()

Set obj = Application

Debug.Print "IsNothing=" & (obj Is Nothing)

References.AddFromFile "Test.mdb"

Debug.Print "IsNothing=" & (obj Is Nothing)

End Function

Obviously, in my code, “Test.mdb” refers to an actual file. If I run this code, Debug.Print gives me “IsNothing=False” for both instances, but after the function finishes and if I wait a couple seconds, Debug.Print will give me “IsNothing=True”. If I comment out References.AddFromFile, Debug.Print gives me “IsNothing=False” no matter how long I wait.

It makes sense to me that since Access has to re-compile the VBA code after loading the library that all global variables are reset. I’ve experimented with moving the global variable into a class, but since I then need a global variable for the class, the class variable then gets reset instead. I tried using a local variable in the function to save the value of the global variable, but it looks like Access waits a couple seconds after the code is finished running to do the re-compile, so that doesn’t work either. Does anyone have any other ideas to accomplish this?

Answer 1

I don’t really know if this will solve the problem for this kind of reference, but in general, I don’t use public variables for this kind of thing, but instead use a STATIC variable inside your function. It would be something like this:

  Public Function SetObj() As Object
    Static obj As Object

    If (obj Is Nothing) Then
       Set obj = Application
    End If
    Set SetObj = obj
  End Function

Then you’d just use SetObj as an object for using your application. In a production app, you’d need tear-down code, too, but I’ve omitted that here.

I doubt this helps, but your code struck me as rather inefficient and incomplete.