How to Qualify Objects with ! and .

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How to quality objects with ! (exclamation) and . (period)?
In particular, when should ! (exclamation be used?
Thanks.
Armstrong

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The bang or exclamation mark ! is used to indicate a member of a collection. For example Forms!frmMain specifies frmMain as a member of the Forms collection.

The period . is used to indicate a property or method of an object. For example Forms!frmMain.Caption is the Caption property of the form frmMain.

Controls on a form are both members of the form’s Controls collection and properties of the form. Since Controls is the default property of the form, the following are equivalent:

Forms!frmMain.Controls!txtLast
Forms!frmMain!txtLast
Forms!frmMain.txtLast

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Controls on a form are both members of the form’s Controls collection and properties of the form. Since Controls is the default property of the form, the following are equivalent:

Forms!frmMain.Controls!txtLast
Forms!frmMain!txtLast
Forms!frmMain.txtLast

HansV,
Thanks to your crystal clear enlightenment, now I realize the period (.) is meant for property/method.
It’s the latter I was confused. Different authors of different books use ! and . arbitrarily. It turns out to be they’re equivalent. That’s interesting.
Thanks for your help.
Armstrong

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If you use . when typing code you will get the Intellisense – this will save you from mispelling a control name. It also means that if you rename a control on the form, the code will not compile until you change all references to that renamed control in code.

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