[AccessD] OT: Hyperlinks by automation

Henry Simpson hsimpson88 at hotmail.com
Tue Apr 8 11:58:40 CDT 2003


Thanks Jim:

Your suggestion is the manner in which I would ordinarily have implemented 
this solution though I would probably just add a menu item when the workbook 
loads.  Buttons really aren't that pretty on workbooks even though you can 
set them not to print.  The code behind the workbook would be a simple shell 
execute declare and I would add a hidden column that stored the path string 
for each invoice rather than store it in the hyperlink.  Then code in the 
menu event to pass the path from the currently selected row to the shell 
execute procedure and it's done.

Using a coded procedure also allows the procedure to check for the continued 
existence of the file, and failing that, the folder and provide a more 
meaningful message to the user than 'Cannot open the specified file.' as 
well as provide the option to pass the project folder to the shell execute 
(which opens the project folder for exploring) should that exist.

Never having used hyperlinks before, I thought it would be interesting to 
explore the possibilities and this seemed a logical and intuitive place, but 
the complete lack of error handling and control of error messages makes me 
wonder why anyone would use hyperlinks.  If there really is no way to simply 
click on the hyperlink and keep the Excel workbook open, I will likely 
switch back to my old way of doing things.

Hen




>From: "Jim DeMarco" <Jdemarco at hshhp.org>
>Reply-To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
>To: <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
>Subject: RE: [AccessD] OT:  Hyperlinks by automation
>Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 12:14:38 -0400
>
>Henry,
>
>What about using an Excel Forms command button and VBA code to do the same 
>thing?  Not as pretty but you'd have control of the screen.
>
>HTH,
>
>Jim DeMarco
>Director of Product Development
>HealthSource/Hudson Health Plan
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Henry Simpson [mailto:hsimpson88 at hotmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 10:42 AM
>To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
>Subject: [AccessD] OT: Hyperlinks by automation
>
>
>I have an Access 97 procedure that creates a series of Word 97 Doc invoices 
>and adds a row in an Excel 97 sheet summarizing each invoice as it 
>generates
>each document.  Each document is saved into a specific project folder
>determined by the application.  In the past, the code also did a .SaveAs to 
>an invoicing folder created for the year and month so that all the 
>documents
>could be retrieved from a single location.  This made it easy to just drag 
>all the files from Explorer to a single email to accounting.  The
>alternative had been to open each project record, open the linked folder 
>and
>drag one document at a time which was very tedious when there were many
>invoices.  The monthly group folder was supposed to be temporary but 
>because
>of the convenience of being able to work with multiple invoices in a single 
>location, some users were inclined to make required revisions to invoices 
>in
>this location rather than in the project folder.  The end result was that 
>we
>wound up with document version issues.
>
>I've been implementing an alternate solution where the access application 
>inserts a hyperlink to each invoice document in the Excel summary sheet.  
>The advantage is that when a user makes a revision, he is reminded by the 
>presence of the Excel sheet to update the Excel entry and users have a
>single place from which all invoices can be conveniently opened and the
>document is the one in the actual project folder.  Mail traffic is also
>reduced since we had anywhere from 80 to 200 documents of about 25k size
>that were being attached.  Also, because I use a UNC link, the sheet works 
>to open pertinent documents from anywhere on the WAN.
>
>Not having worked with hyperlinks before, I've run into an annoyance.  When 
>a user merely clicks on a hyperlink, the Word doc opens but the Excel
>workbook closes leaving the Excel application open.  In order to keep the 
>Excel workbook open, it is necessary for users to right click the hyperlink
>and select the hyperlink context sensitive menu item and then select Open 
>in
>New Window from a fly out menu.  All this mousing and clicking is annoying 
>and I would prefer that Excel remain open if the user simply (left) clicks 
>the hyperlink.  Is there any way to implement this?
>
>Hen
>
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