Templates: The Meat of the ACCDT Template Files

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In my previous post, we cracked open an Access 2007 template file. For this post, I’d like to delve into the / template/database folder, where pretty much all the template content resides.

 

 

 

In the root of this folder you will notice four files, with very important roles:

 

· databaseProperties.xml – This file contains the database-level properties that the database created from of this template should have (such as what is the start up form, size of the Navigation Pane, etc). You can generally access these properties through the OM as well: CurrentDb.Properties(“StartupForm”). Here is a sample file:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>

- <Properties xmlns="**https://schemas.microsoft.com/office/access/2005/04/template/properties**"\>

<Property Name="ANSI Query Mode" Type="4" Value="0" />

<Property Name="Themed Form Controls" Type="4" Value="1" />

<Property Name="NavPane Category" Type="4" Value="4" />

<Property Name="UseMDIMode" Type="2" Value="0" />

<Property Name="ShowDocumentTabs" Type="1" Value="True" />

<Property Name="Picture Property Storage Format" Type="4" Value="0" />

<Property Name="CheckTruncatedNumFields" Type="4" Value="1" />

<Property Name="NavPane Closed" Type="4" Value="1" />

<Property Name="NavPane Width" Type="4" Value="215" />

<Property Name="NavPane Category Name" Type="10" Value="Issues Navigation" />

<Property Name="NavPane View By" Type="4" Value="0" />

<Property Name="NavPane Sort By" Type="4" Value="1" />

<Property Name="StartupForm" Type="10" Value="Issue List" />

</Properties>

 

· NavPane.xml – This file describes the contents of three system tables: MSysNavPaneGroupCategories, MSysNavPaneGroups, MSysNavPaneGroupToObjects and MSysNavPaneObjectIDs. As the names obviously indicates, these tables define all the content within the Navigation Pane. Having both these tables and the NavPane-related properties in databaseProperties.xml, Access can completely define the state of the Navigation Pane.

· Relationships.xml – This file describes the contents of the MSysRelationships system table.

· vbaReferences.xml – This file contains the VBA external references.

 

Below the root folder is the objects folder. This folder contains all the database’s top level objects: forms, reports, query and macros. We call these AccessObject parts. I’ll post in more detail next week about these.