[AccessD] Form saves changes to Form Property: Order By

[Borge Hansen]

Hi everyone,
I read with interest Tina's predicament with the Form no longer loading records.

I have a somewhat similar problem with the setting and saving of a
Form's properties, in this case the "Order By" property on a
Continuous Form.

Currently using MS Access 365 / Access 2019 !

So for years we have been using the following setup:
In the header above the row of txtControl controls we have labels with
the following function on the "On Click" event :

=columnsort([name of txtControl below])

the function is :
+++++++
Function ColumnSort(ColumnToBeSorted)
  'ColumnToBeSorted : Name of txtControl to sort on
  On Error GoTo Err_ColumnSort_Click

    Dim frm
    frm = Screen.ActiveForm.Name
    If IsNull(Forms(frm).Tag) Or Forms(frm).Tag = "" Then Forms(frm).Tag = 0
    Forms(frm)(ColumnToBeSorted).SetFocus

    If Forms(frm).Tag = 0 Then
      RunCommand acCmdSortAscending
      Forms(frm).Tag = 1
    Else
      RunCommand acCmdSortDescending
      Forms(frm).Tag = 0
    End If
Exit_ColumnSort_Click:
    Exit Function
Err_ColumnSort_Click:
   MyMsgBox Err.Number & "  " & Err.Description
   Resume Exit_ColumnSort_Click
End Function
++++++++

When I open a Continuous Form directly from the navigation panel and
in sequence sort on three or more different columns and then close the
Form by a right click and close form, the "Order By" parameters are
saved to the Form's "Order By" property - and not just the most recent
sort column but all columns having been sorted on, like this :

Order By: [frmPurgeReviveContact].[RWCode],
[frmPurgeReviveContact].[FullNameSorting] DESC,
[frmPurgeReviveContact].[UFN]

Strangely, the Form's Tag property change is not saved!

I am pretty sure that previous versions of Access (Access 2003 comes
to mind) did not have this behaviour.

The expected behavior (at least mine) is for a Form that is opened in
view mode to close without saving any changes to the Form's properties
that may have been changed through vba code while in view mode....

I see on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/access.docmd.openform
that the docmd.openform optional datamode has as its default setting :
DataMode
Optional
AcFormOpenDataMode
An AcFormOpenDataMode constant that specifies the data entry mode for the form.
This applies only to forms opened in Form view or Datasheet view. The
default value is acFormPropertySettings.

And the acFormPropertySettings will save any changes to the Form's properties!

All of our Forms opened from vba code has so far been using a simple
docmd.OpenForm

We have another continuous Form that people are using constantly to
filter and sort and the "Order By" parameters are never saved on
closing this form with a simple docmd.Close

Now, on this particular Form - what is different here - the record
source keeps changing and the ColumnSort() function here takes as
parameter the name of the txtControl which is different from the
underlying control source property referencing the field or column in
the recordsource query. I don't know if that is what makes the form
not save the sort parameters on the Form's "Order By" property.

With the first continuous Form that now is a problem the Form is
opened from a command button's Hyperlink Address property referencing
the Form and in order for the form not to save the the "Order By" form
property changes I have had to change the
docmd.Close
to
    DoCmd.Close acForm, "frmPurgeReviveContact", acSaveNo


So my question is :
Did MS change the default value of the AcFormOpenDataMode from one
older MS Access version to a newer one? Because this behavior is new
to me.

And is there a way to change this default setting other than now
having to change all instances of
docmd.close
for closing a form to one that specifically says "and don't save any
changes to the Form's properties that User may have done while working
on the form"

/borge