How to get to Access Menu's for Coding

Question

I recently inherited this Access DB and the original Developer is not available.  I am trying to get it to display all the programming menu's, so I can start to reverse engineer the code.  I can <Right Click-->Design> on "Main", but that's about it.  I can not get the standard Access menu's to display so I can begin looking at the code.

Can someone provide me guidance?  thank you

Answer 1

Hi Jordan, I'm an independent adviser and can help.

There are a couple of ways to do this.

First, pressing Ctrl+G will get you into the VBE (Visual Basic Environment) Which is where the VBA code can be reviewed, debugged and modified.

Second, Most Access code is event driven. This means its tied to events, like clicking on a control or updating a value. If you open a form in Design mode, select a control and open the Properties dialog, you will see an Events tab. In that tab are various events that can be triggered. If there is code behind an event it will be indicated there. You can then press the ellipses to view the specific code snippet.

Third, Code modules that are not event driven are listed in the Navigation Pane and can be accessed by right clicking and selecting Design mode.

Also, Access has two programming modes. Besides VBA, there is a marco language. Macros are also listed in Nav Pane..

If you need any further help with this feel free to ask.

Answer 2

Thank you for that info.  I have been able to get into the Macro screen and I checked out the VBE screen too.  I found the code in both to be very cryptic, and I can't seem to be able to map it back to Database tables.  I can't even access the database tables themselves.

I was hoping there was a way to get into the navigation of the menu's, like below, but I have tried clicking on Design View and it does not show the menu structure at all.

Answer 3

I'm not sure what you are expecting. If you are referring to the ribbon, that is an internal programming and not accessible. If you are referring to buttons like New Contact, You need to do what I said, Open the form in Design mode, select the New Contact button control and then look in the On Click event.

Again, most code is event driven. So you need to look in the Events. I'm not clear what menu structure you are trying to look at.

The import macro you show sets the variables and then runs a VBA module to import an Excel sheet.

This screenshot indicates this was started from the Contacts template.

Answer 4

D=The Tables in database are sources for Forms, Queries and Reports.  You would need to look at the Record source in the Properties Windows to see which Table (or Query) is attached to what Form or Report.

Also, you say you can't get to the Tables.  Is the database split?  Is the Navigation Pane showing?   Hmm, maybe it would help to know exactly what you are trying to do, i.e. add new fields?

Answer 5

Gina, Thanks for info.  I inherited this application, so I don't know the technical design.  I am trying to reverse engineer it.

The Navigation pane is not showing.

I do know this application imports records from an Excel file, and inserts them into an Access Table.  I am trying to debug the field mappings of this import because the structure of the Excel file changed, which is now impacting the inserts into the Access Table.  I would really like to view the field (i.e. column) mappings from Excel to Access Table.

I was hoping there is a simple way to browse the Access Table, but I can't find that view/screen in Design Mode.