[AccessD] A2K: Drag and Drop with Access

Arthur Fuller artful at rogers.com
Fri Jun 6 19:54:07 CDT 2003


You can do D&D in Access, although it's difficult. I've got some code that
lets me D&D in a treeview (i.e. move an employee from Dept X to Dept Y). It
was a nightmare to figure out and then a night to write. I don't have
anything truly portable yet; each new instance I have to rethink from the
ground up. It's the conceptual stuff that's hard, and denying the illegal
moves (can't drop a department on an employee, nor an employee on an
employee, nor an employee on her current department). Once you get the code
to allow D&D you find yourself writing against all the exceptions. Nine out
of ten possible moves are illegal; the other is permitted. Makes you wish
for a Java / .NET style Try / Catch construct in Access, but I suspect it
isn't in the cards. On Error just isn't the same :-)

D&D can be very useful, in Access as in other languages. But at the Explorer
level, for example, the exceptions are few (can't drop a folder on itself,
can't drop a file on a file unless it's an archive file, &c). But in the
higher level apps, order entry say, the rules are much more complex. I did a
D&D a while back that lets the user select compoenents and from them create
new assemblies. Any given component might be an assembly, except of course
itself.

The D&D code IMO is trivial compared to the conceptual (you can do this, but
not that or the other thing) part.

If you want an example of the raw D&D code I can supply same, but I stress
that this is only the raw arithmetic. The logic you must define and then
write yourself, and there is no (IMO) general solution for this.

Arthur 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Christopher
Hawkins
Sent: June 5, 2003 1:32 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [AccessD] A2K: Drag and Drop with Access


Ah.  I get you.  Sorry.  I mistakenly detected a tone of incredulty that
drag n' drop could be useful in Access.  Once again, the shortcomings of
non-inflected text communication rears it's ugly head!  ;)

-C-

---- Original Message ----
From: cfoust at infostatsystems.com
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com, 
Subject: RE: [AccessD] A2K: Drag and Drop with Access
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 09:08:21 -0700

>I wasn't saying it couldn't be useful, but if you don't know the
>purpose
>of the action, the suggestions are likely to be off target.  If you 
>need
>a hammer, it doesn't help if some hands you a nail!
>
>Charlotte Foust
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Christopher Hawkins [mailto:clh at christopherhawkins.com]
>Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 7:42 AM
>To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
>Subject: RE: [AccessD] A2K: Drag and Drop with Access
>
>
>Drag and drop could be very useful, Charlotte.  As useful as in any 
>other application.
>
>For example, I worked for a company that had a variable compensation 
>product.  If we could have allowed the users to assign people or 
>department to different compensation plans by dragging and dropping the
>person or group's name over to a folder (or something) for the
>appropriate plan, everyone would have been ecstatic.
>
>Just one instance where I can see it would be useful.
>
>Sadly, we never pulled it off.
>
>I worked for another company that managed to hack out a fair
>drag-n-drop
>in an Access 2000 app, but I never got to look at the code.
>
>-Christopher-
>
>---- Original Message ----
>From: cfoust at infostatsystems.com
>To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com,
>Subject: RE: [AccessD] A2K: Drag and Drop with Access
>Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 08:24:48 -0700
>
>>Where are you going with this?  What purpose is being served by the 
>>drag and drop?
>>
>>Charlotte Foust
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Darren DICK [mailto:d.dick at uws.edu.au]
>>Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 8:59 PM
>>To: AccessD List
>>Subject: [AccessD] A2K: Drag and Drop with Access
>>
>>
>>Hi All
>>Anyone have any success with dragging and dropping of controls onto
>>Access forms? Eg I have an Image control displaying an image and 
>say
>>it's in the top left corner of the form. I want to 'click' onto the
>>image control and 'drag' it to say... the bottom left corner of the 
>>form.
>>
>>I have found heaps of samples for VB but they use VB only events
>etc,
>>that I can't replicate or fudge in Access.
>>
>>Any suggestions??
>>
>>Many thanks in advance
>>
>>Darren
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>
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