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TextBox.ControlType property (Access)

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Use the ControlType property in Visual Basic to determine the type of control on a form or report. Read/write Byte.

Syntax

expression.ControlType

expression A variable that represents a TextBox object.

Remarks

The ControlType property setting is an intrinsic constant that specifies the control type. For a complete list of controls created by the CreateControl and CreateReportControl methods, see the AcControlType enumeration.

The ControlType property can only be set by using Visual Basic in form Design view or report Design view, but it can be read in all views.

The ControlType property is useful not only for checking for a specific control type in code, but also for changing the type of control to another type. For example, you can change a text box to a combo box by setting the ControlType property for the text box to acComboBox while in form Design view.

Use the ControlType property to change characteristics of similar controls on a form according to certain conditions. For example, if you don't want users to edit existing data in text boxes, you can set the SpecialEffect property for all text boxes to Flat and set the form's AllowEdits property to No. (The SpecialEffect property doesn't affect whether data can be edited; it's used here to provide a visual cue that the control behavior has changed.)

The ControlType property is also used to specify the type of control to create when you are using the CreateControl method.

Example

The following example examines the ControlType property for all controls on a form. For each label and text box control, the procedure toggles the SpecialEffect property for those controls.

When the SpecialEffect property of the label control is set to Shadowed, and the SpecialEffect property of the text box control is set to Normal, and the AllowAdditions, AllowDeletions, and AllowEdits properties are all set to True, the intCanEdit variable is toggled to allow editing of the underlying data.

Sub ToggleControl(frm As Form) 
 Dim ctl As Control 
 Dim intI As Integer, intCanEdit As Integer 
 Const conTransparent = 0 
 Const conWhite = 16777215 
 For Each ctl in frm.Controls 
 With ctl 
 Select Case .ControlType 
 Case acLabel 
 If .SpecialEffect = acEffectShadow Then 
 .SpecialEffect = acEffectNormal 
 .BorderStyle = conTransparent 
 intCanEdit = True 
 Else 
 .SpecialEffect = acEffectShadow 
 intCanEdit = False 
 End If 
 Case acTextBox 
 If .SpecialEffect = acEffectNormal Then 
 .SpecialEffect = acEffectSunken 
 .BackColor = conWhite 
 Else 
 .SpecialEffect = acEffectNormal 
 .BackColor = frm.Detail.BackColor 
 End If 
 End Select 
 End With 
 Next ctl 
 If intCanEdit = IFalse Then 
 With frm 
 .AllowAdditions = False 
 .AllowDeletions = False 
 .AllowEdits = False 
 End With 
 Else 
 With frm 
 .AllowAdditions = True 
 .AllowDeletions = True 
 .AllowEdits = True 
 End With 
 End If 
End Sub

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