• Creating radio-button group using data from table (2010)

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    #490505

    I would’ve thought this would be a really basic thing to do, but Access 2010 won’t let me, and the Lounge doesn’t provide any useful search results. Oh, and Microsoft appears to have abandoned the idea of a useful help system. I’m feeling pretty outraged, all up. Hoping someone here will be able to relieve my anger.

    I want to create a radio button option group on a form in Access 2010. I want the option text to come from a table with two fields: an ID number and the option text.

    I expected this to be the same as creating a Combo Box, but Access wants me to type in all of the option text items within the wizard. And if I turn off the wizard, I can’t find a way to create radio buttons.

    Please help!

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    • #1406448

      A great place to start would be to see what gets produced when you use the switchboard manager to build a switchboard. This creates everything you would need and you could then fiddle with the results to really understand how it all works.

      Have a look at this link to find the Switchboard Manager
      http://www.addintools.com/documents/access/where-is-switchboard-manager.html

    • #1406453

      Andrew’s suggestion is a good one – the concepts are fairly similar to what you are asking for. It would be useful to understand a bit more about what you are trying to achieve as well. For example, what causes the labels on the radio buttons to need to change? Is this a bound form, and changing the record being displayed would cause the labels to change? Also, how many radio buttons do you expect to have, and is it a constant number? If the scenario as I suggested, you will probably need to have a VBA procedure that is attached to the OnCurrent event for the form that actually modifies the option group and the code to do that won’t be trivial.

      • #1406566

        Thanks, guys.

        I’ll definitely have a look at Switchboard Manager.

        In the meantime, I’ve decided I’m just going to use a list box, since I realised that’s really the functionality I’m after.

        I didn’t need the radio button labels to change; I just didn’t want to have to type them in again when they were already elsewhere in the database (some are a bit long).

        I am still confused why the instructions I found for manually building a radio button group in Access 2003 don’t seem to have an equivalent in Access 2010. The problem was that I couldn’t find the setting that changes the type of option group (I think they called it an “Option Group Toolbar”, which is what I couldn’t find on the ribbon).

        I also don’t understand why some controls go into a multi-selection “table” in Layout view. Is there an Access 2010 form-building tutorial somewhere I could read that goes all the way from the basics to advanced features?

        Thanks for any further help. 🙂

        • #1406609

          I didn’t need the radio button labels to change; I just didn’t want to have to type them in again when they were already elsewhere in the database (some are a bit long).

          Have you tired using copy and paste. You can copy the text from the label or the whole option group and all the controls.

          If you like to use an option group, Once built, you can copy and paste it to other forms. This works with with all control types.

    • #1406601

      You might find this Controls useful in making design decisions. There are numerous form building tutorials, many of them videos, but they are generally either introductory or advanced on a specific topic. I would suggest looking for one of the many books on Access – the Microsoft Access Inside Out is one I like, and it’s written by a member of the Access Development team, but there are a number of excellent ones. Pick one that seems to work best for your learning style.

    • #1406780

      That’s a bit more simple than I was after, WendellB, though I guess it’s a nice-looking reference. I was more after instructions for how to build each possible type of element, and descriptions of what each setting does. You know, like a *Help System*!

      I have books, but the Ribbon appears to have made most of them obsolete, and I’m loathe to spend more money at the moment. I’ll keep “Inside Out” in mind for the future.

      HiTechCoach, cutting and pasting after the fact does make sense. I think I was thrown when the original wizard wouldn’t do what I want. Though it does make sense, I guess, since a radio button group needs to be a fixed size.

      Thanks all. I’m back on track.

    • #1406807
    • #1409113

      Good thought, HiTechCoach, and good to know about.

      Unfortunately it doesn’t function deep enough to reach the button I was after. 🙁

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