Shortcut menu pick up name of current sub form

Shane,

All I'm trying to do is create a generic shortcut menu that will detect which form/subform the user is on and the form/subform name is passed to the shortcut menu macro.

So, simply returning the name of the form/subform and passing it as a parameter to the function that gets called on the menu item macro.

Stu

You can return the current form by using:
Screen.ActiveForm.Name

However, you can't retrieve the subform container name this way. One way you might be able to do it is to loop through all of the subforms on the main form and check if one of its controls currently has the focus, but I haven't tried this.

I would highly recommend going down the route of passing the form or subform as an object rather than its name. So if you have:
Dim myForm As String

Forms(mYForm).SomeControl="Some text"

you can instead use:
Dim myForm As Form

myForm.SomeControl="Some text"

You can pass the current form simply by using the object variable Form (or Me in VBA) - this will pass the active subform or form as an object.

Sorry, Shane, I can easily do what you've suggested in VBA, but I'm talking about passing the form object/name to a function that gets called in a MACRO used for a shortcut menu.

You know, when you use "RunCode" in a macro and you name a function like "=myfunctionname()".  I want to be able to do:  "=myfunctionname(screen.activeform.name)" or "=myfunctionname(screen.activeform)".

I've tried this, but the GUI convertes the "screen.activeform" into "[screen].[activeform]" - which it doesn't recognise as an object - just text.  I've also tried "=myfunctionname(=activeform.name)", but it doesn't like that either.

If you can't answer the above, do you know how to build a shortcut menu in VBA code rather than using a macro?

Stu

I suppose you could call a parameter-less function which in turn calls the "real" function passing the appropriate parameters that you want to run from the shortcut as a workaround - would that be an acceptable option?

Sorry, I don't really use macros - I avoid them like the plague if I can :(

A side effect of right-clicking is setting the focus, so use at you will:

Screen.ActiveContol
Screen.ActiveForm

By looking at the .Parent Chain of the current control you can get all the way back to the ActiveForm.

Good Lucik

I'm not sure that will work - ActiveControl won't return the subform, but the control on the subform that currently has the focus. Since the control doesn't have a Parent property unless it's on a tab control, you can't traverse the chain. Right clicking doesn't always change the focus - if the subform currently has the focus, right clicking in an empty space on the main form keeps the focus on the subform control (but bizarrely, the reverse is not true).

Sorry, that was in response to the earlier comment at 1:32PM GMT, not the one at 1:35.

I just made the following test:
* AutoKeys macro runs code ParentChain()
* Global function ParentChain() defines ctl and frm (control and form) and sets those to Screen.ActiveControl and .ActiveForm, then stops.
* Exploring from the immediate pane:

? ctl.Name
cboSupplierID
? ctl.Parent.Name
fsubCategoryProducts
? ctl.Parent.Parent.Name
frmCategories
? frm.Name
frmCategories

Going down the chain is more complex, and not reliable if you display the same subform twice on the main form. You need to loop through all controls, find subform controls, test their content, find tab controls, test their controls...

So ActiveForm is always the main form, but ActiveControl can be used to find the missing links ;)

Durrrr...you know, I should really be more careful when I'm testing. ?ctl.Parent obviously gives an error since Parent returns a Form object....

I knew that. Ya gotta believe me. Honest!! :-)

No harm done, just please correct me as well as often as needed :)