Broken continuous forms on using scrollbar when form is wide and controls are anchored top right

Question

I think this is an Access bug, and it's been driving my team crazy in an important business application, so I've tested and replicated this using the latest Northwind Developer edition 2.4, using a modified copy of frmOrderList.

Edition Windows 11 Enterprise

Version 23H2

Installed on ‎17/‎07/‎2024

OS build 22631.4602

Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22700.1055.0

Processor 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11850H @ 2.50GHz 2.50 GHz

Installed RAM 32.0 GB (31.7 GB usable)

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

Microsoft® Access® for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2410 Build 16.0.18129.20200) 64-bit

frmOrderList is a Continuous Form. Modify the design to anchor some controls top right (e.g. from Order Date onwards, plus the controls in the header).

Open the form on a not-tiny monitor and enlarge or maximise the Access window. Click in the scrollbar on the right to navigate down and up the records.

Various problems can be seen, for example parts of the record details area can remain blank, or the right-hand columns simply don't update to show the correct information. The same problems occur when using Page Up and Page Down, but no problems are seen when using the mouse wheel to scroll.

If the form is kept very small so that no controls are being dynamically moved, all seems fine, but the moment controls are being moved by the anchoring the problems start.

Example images below.

This is showing a broken display with empty areas after scrolling up from the bottom:

This is showing the wrong data for the records after scrolling down:

I hope this can be fixed asap by the Access team, as it's really annoying and can even lead people to mis-read data completely as the wrong values can be displayed for a row.

Answer 1

OK I've now found a specific cause - the issue only occurs on my second monitor when it is in its recommended 100% scaling.

DELL P2423 1920x1200 with 100% scaling = BAD

DELL P2423 1920x1200 with 125% scaling = GOOD

Main laptop monitor DELL Precision 1920x1200 with 125% scaling = GOOD

So I hope this helps MS identify and fix the bug!

Answer 2

Thanks for pointing out the problems that can arise when changing the anchoring on certain controls and not others. I can distort the layout by doing so selectively, although I never see unusual behavior your screenshot depicts on a 28 inch 4K monitor. This is kind of weird, but also consistent with what I'd expect.

Further, interaction between layouts and anchoring can produce unexpected results.

I suspect, as you say, that your specific display problems are dependent on your environment to some extent.

Answer 3

You can simply use this. If you cannot replicate the problem, that suggests it's specific to certain versions/environments.

Answer 4

Actually I've now noticed that the unaltered Northwind frmOrderList already shows this broken behaviour to some extent. e.g. I see this after one click down in scrollbar:

and after a few more clicks of the scrollbar and/or Page Up/Down I get a display like this:

I noticed that the default form has a couple of controls in the header anchored top right, but changing this so they are anchored top left does not actually fix this.

So now I'm thinking it's all continuous forms showing this problem once greater than a certain width, irrespective of anchoring right, but doing that makes the problem more obvious.

Answer 5

To understand what is happening you would need to have the file available.