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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T19:51:12+00:00

I’m migrating my access 2003 application to access 2010 and I’ve some issues with

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I’m migrating my access 2003 application to access 2010 and I’ve some issues with the new ribbon.

The first problem is the height of the ribbon, it is clearly too high.

My user don’t need to edit the database but they need to access to some specific feature in particular in the report like :

  • close the report

  • print

  • export

I found the code which permits to desactivate the ribbon

DoCmd.ShowToolbar “Ribbon”, acToolbarNo

or minimise it

DoCmd.SelectObject acTable, "MSysObjects", True
DoCmd.RunCommand acCmdWindowHide

but I don’t think it’s a good idea to activate it on each report and desactivate after the close (or deminised it and reminise)

any good idee ?

regards

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Actually, I do think activating the ribbon for reports is not a bad idea at all.

    Also, that code you have for minimizing the ribbon is incorrect. The code you have posted would in fact minimize or hide the navigation pane. And worse it would fail in most cases since you likely don’t have the “show system objects” option selected for the navigation pane which would show all kinds a system tables, which is a general rule you going to have hidden in any application anyway.

    Note that if you do want the navigation pane to be hidden on startup of the application, then simply in the file->options, current database, simply unchecked that display navigation pane option.

    Now, first up, the correct code to minimize the ribbon is thus following:

    CommandBars.ExecuteMso “MinimizeRibbon”

    Now for as for gathering or recapturing the space of the ribbon?

    I suggest two approaches that can work quite well:

    First consider taking buttons and options you have in a form, and moving them up into a ribbon for that form. That way you recapture the lost space. Note that you can have the ribbon direct call the SAME code that your buttons in that form used anyway.

    I guess this really comes down to how much space you have on forms now. Not all of us have a lot of extra space like this screenshot of Access:

    enter image description here

    So, I do think that ribbons are a nice UI.

    Next up, you could certainly consider to your application with the ribbon minimized. This again would free up the space. And you might even for reports un-minimize ribbon.

    For reports, I do think the ribbon makes a lot of sense. The reason being is you need some place to put all those options such as e-mail as PDF, save as PDF, export to word etc. You get this:

    enter image description here

    So in fact I do suggest to display the ribbon for reports, probably the only major design decision here is if you want to use ribbons free up existing application space on forms.

    You could as noted hide the ribbon all together except in the case of displaying reports.

    All of office uses the ribbon. So does SharePoint. Heck even AutoCAD uses the ribbon interface now. And keep in mind such interfaces also work VERY well on tablets. So such a UI has many great “future proof” features such as running your software on a tablet.

    Thus you might want to consider approaches that allow you to work with the ribbon, and not so much against it.

    So the ribbon can de-clutter and free up space in forms. However, if use of the ribbon for your general application is not in the cards, I still think for reports they make a lot of sense.

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