Access Hacks

Hack #81. Inform Users of a Long Process

While your code is conquering a long looping process, users might think their system has crashed, unless you provide some visual clue that a process is running.

When a user clicks a button to run a process, and that process takes a while to complete, the user won't know if the process is still running or if the system has crashed. Just imagine it: you click a button on a form and … nothing. A minute or two later, still nothing. Maybe even 5 or 10 minutes later, the system is still unresponsive.

This is nerve-wracking for the user sitting in front of his computer. He has to weigh whether he should try the break key or let the system continue to look like it is hung up. On the other hand, if he stops a process that was running smoothly after all, he will just have to start it all over again. Ugh!

Don't leave your users in this predicament. You know that 100,000 records are being processed and it takes a while. But your users might not know this and get frustrated waiting.

This hack takes advantage of the SysCmd method. With SysCmd, you can write messages in the status bar during CPU-intensive processing, even with screen refresh turned off. Figure 8-16 shows a form (a rather simple one, I admit). The button has been clicked, and the process is chugging away. Notice the status bar in the lower-left corner of the screen; a continuously updated message is being generated there.

Figure 8-16. Providing a feedback message in the status bar

The message ...