Question

I think I’m looking directly at an Access 2003 bug. Here’s what I did (I think):

1. I’m developing a Continuous Form (i.e. multiple records per page).
2. I have an unbound textbox in the background of the Details section. Under Data Properties, I have Enabled=No and Locked=Yes. (In other words, I don’t want the user to select it. I only want it for the background color)
3. This textbox also has some conditional formatting to change the background color for that row. (e.g. If we haven’t spoken to that customer in awhile, the background for that record is red)
4. If I choose a record where the conditional formatting is active (i.e. the background is red), I can actually click on this textbox. There’s not much that I can do, of course, but this shouldn’t happen and surely would be confusing to the end-users.

Has anyone else seen this? What’s your workaround?

Answer 1

Enabled is a property that can be controlled via conditional formatting. By default when you add a new condition, the Enabled property is set to True. If you don’t want your control to be enabled you must explicitly set Enabled = False within the conditional formatting rule.

The property is toggled via a button in the lower right corner of the conditional formatting dialog. It’s easy to miss (I forget about it all the time).

Personally, I think the property should be three-way: True, False, or Inherit (with Inherit as the default). Unfortunately, Access forces you to be explicit when adding conditional formatting rules and state whether the rule should make the control Enabled or Disabled.