How do I get the description field to display in Access 07?

[josh_m]

In Access 03 the navigation box had a description field that was always displayed and sortable by. In the Access 07 navigation pane it has gone away. I use the description field in all my databases quite extensively for notes and reference and to label the order in which certain queries are to be ran in our daily processes.
I can live without being able to sort by the description, but I really need to be able to see the description without having to right click on every table or query.
Any solutions will be greatly appreciated by our entire office!

 

[SydneyGeek]

I don't know the answer to your question but maybe these suggestions will help:

1. Create custom groupings for your objects, so you only display the relevant ones. Search the help for custom group.

2. Give your users the option to search the database objects. Right-click the Access Objects bar and select Search Bar.

3. If you want queries to run in a set order, attach the queries to buttons. You can lay out the buttons in order on a dedicated form, and place descriptions in labels adjactent to the buttons. You can also chain several queries together under one button. If you run through the wizard to create one button, it's simply a case of duplicating the line that says

DoCmd.OpenQuery "SomeQuery"

and changing the query names to suit. Note: I only do this when I chain several action queries together. In that case you can flank the query lines with

DoCmd.SetWarnings False
'queries in here
DoCmd.SetWarnings True

That stops the popups that you are about to delete/append/update/create x number of records.

Denis

 

[josh_m]

Denis,
Thank you very much for your suggestion. I had thought about doing that (and probably will when I get the time) which would work great for our queries. But for our tables of reference data, we use the description to note the date it was updated.
I did some googling and found out that a lot of people use this feature and miss it like I do. I did find a good form that emulates the old database window.

If anyone else is having the same issue, here is the link for a couple forms:

http://accessjunkie.com/faq_13.aspx

I used the 4th option and it works great.

 

[Joe4]

Josh,

I found your question quite interesting. I noticed in my old databases I created in Access 2003 (mdb), when I looked at them using Access 2007, it showed the Description and Created and Modified Dates. But new databases that I create in Access 2007 (accdb) don't seem to show those. I figured that there has got to be a way to show these, but I was having a heck of a time figuring it out.

So I searched the web, and I finally found out how to show that detail.
- Right click on the top Pane in the Navigation Pane (the title that says "Tables" if you are in Tables, etc).
- Select the "View By" option
- Select "Details"

So this will show you the details. Unfortunately, as you have discovered, you no longer have the ability to sort by those in Access 2007. However, that link you provided gives some good workarounds for that.

 

[srvFan]

Thanks very much for the info. I have been trying to figure out what to do about this for quite a while. I use Access primarily as a tool to summarize data to create a recordset for pivot table source. Being able to sort the queries in a logical sequence helps me organize my thinking and makes it possible to come back later and quickly see how things were put together. The descriptions are sequenced top to bottom like pseudo code. I am looking forward to checking out the various options listed. Thanks again.

 

[Joe4]

I typically number my queries with gaps in between so that I get them to fall in some sort of logical order (i.e. qry10-Description, qry20-Description, etc). Kind of reminiscient of how one used to write code way back in the '80s with BASIC, where each line of code had to be numbered.

It works pretty well for me, except that Access 2007 groups them so the Select queries are together, then the Action queries, etc, so my system doesn't work quite as well as it did before.

I realize that in Access 2007 you can set up "folders" and the like to hold queries, I just haven't gotten into that yet (old habits are hard to change!).