Question

The goal is to create menus which can be utilized with certain controls on an MS Access form and to be able to right click on a that control, for example on a listbox and a relevant context specific menu popup with options, which if clicked, would trigger a predefined subroutine or function.

What is the best method to accomplish this programmatically?

I am using MS Access 2003 and would like to do this using VBA.

Answer 1

First create an _MouseUp event to execute on the respective control looking to see if the right mouse button was clicked and if so, call the .ShowPopup method.

Of course this assumes the

Private Sub MyListControlName_MouseUp(ByVal Button As Integer, _
                                      ByVal Shift As Integer, _
                                      ByVal X As Long, ByVal Y As Long)

  ' Call the SetUpContextMenu function to ensure it is setup with most current context
  ' Note: This really only needs to be setup once for this example since nothing is 
  ' changed contextually here, but it could be further expanded to accomplish this
  SetUpContextMenu  
  ' See if the right mouse button was clicked
  If Button = acRightButton Then
    CommandBars("MyListControlContextMenu").ShowPopup
  End If
End Sub

Since at this point the Command Bar MyListControlContextMenu is undefined, I define the Menu in a separate module as follows:

Public Sub SetUpContextMenu()
  ' Note: This requires a reference to Microsoft Office Object Library
    Dim combo As CommandBarComboBox

    ' Since it may have been defined in the past, it should be deleted, 
    ' or if it has not been defined in the past, the error should be ignored

    On Error Resume Next 
    CommandBars("MyListControlContextMenu").Delete
    On Error GoTo 0

    ' Make this menu a popup menu 
    With CommandBars.Add(Name:="MyListControlContextMenu", Position:=msoBarPopup)

    ' Provide the user the ability to input text using the msoControlEdit type
    Set combo = .Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlEdit)
        combo.Caption = "Lookup Text:"           ' Add a label the user will see
        combo.OnAction = "getText"               ' Add the name of a function to call

    ' Provide the user the ability to click a menu option to execute a function    
    Set combo = .Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlButton)
        combo.BeginGroup = True                  ' Add a line to separate above group
        combo.Caption = "Lookup Details"         ' Add label the user will see
        combo.OnAction = "LookupDetailsFunction" ' Add the name of a function to call

    ' Provide the user the ability to click a menu option to execute a function        
    Set combo = .Controls.Add(Type:=msoControlButton)
        combo.Caption = "Delete Record"          ' Add a label the user will see
        combo.OnAction = "DeleteRecordFunction"  ' Add the name of the function to call

  End With

End Sub 

Since three function have been referenced, we can move on to define these as follows-

getText: Note, this option requires a reference to both the name of the Command Bar menu name as well as the name of the control caption.

Public Function getText() As String

   getText = CommandBars("MyListControlContextMenu").Controls("Lookup Text:").Text

   ' You could optionally do something with this text here, 
   ' such as pass it into another function ...
   MsgBox "You typed the following text into the menu: " & getText

End Function

LookupDetailsFunction: For this example, I will create a shell function and return the text “Hello World!”.

Public Function LookupDetailsFunction() As String

   LookupDetailsFunction = "Hello World!"

   MsgBox LookupDetailsFunction, vbInformation, "Notice!"

End Function

DeleteRecordFunction: For this example, I will ensure the control is still valid by checking it against null, and if still valid, will execute a query to remove the record from a table.

Public Function DeleteRecordFunction() As String

   If Not IsNull(Forms!MyFormName.Controls("MyListControlName").Column(0)) Then
     Currentdb.Execute _
      "DELETE * FROM [MyTableName] " & _
      "WHERE MyKey = " & Forms!MyFormName.Controls("MyListControlName").Column(0) & ";"
     MsgBox "Record Deleted", vbInformation, "Notice!"
   End If

End Function

Note: For LookupDetailsFunction, DeleteRecordFunction and getText functions, these must be within a public scope to work correctly.

Finally, the last step is to test the menu. To do this, open the form, right click on the list control and select one of the options from the popup menu.

Optionally button.FaceID can be utilized to indicate a known office icon to associate with each instance of the menu popup control.

I found Pillai Shyam’s work on creating a FaceID Browser Add-In to be very helpful.

References:
Microsoft
FaceID