Question

I have a tab form called Home and I would like to say for example refresh another form loaded in one of the tabs (or the current one).

I tried the following: [Forms]![Home].[Form]![AnotherForm].[Form].Refresh

But no joy – what is the correct syntax?

Answer 1

Forms![Home]![Name_of_subform_control_on_Home_form].Requery

or (alternative syntax):

Forms("Home")("Name_of_subform_control_on_Home_form").Requery

Some clarification:

1. In Access, nested subforms are always placed in a subform control.
   If you want to access the subform programmatically, you have to use the name of the subform control, not the name of the nested subform itself!
2. It doesn’t matter whether the subform control is directly on the Home form, or in a tab control. You always use the names of the form and of the subform control, you don’t need the name of the tab control.

The solution is even shorter when the code that does the refresh is directly in the Home form:

Me.Name_of_subform_control_on_Home_form.Requery

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EDIT:

I just noticed that I used Requery instead of Refresh in my answer (probably because I read ChrisPadgham’s answer before where he suggests using Requery).

You can call both Requery and Refresh using the syntax shown above.
Which one to use depends on what you want to do:

• Use Requery if you want to re-load the data source of the form
• Use Refresh if you want to re-load the form itself, i.e. refresh the controls