I have recently “inherited” a database system to look after. It used to exist on several people’s desktops in various offices around the country. The decision has been made to make the use of this DB a “company standard” and so it has to be made more widely available in a common version.
The company standard for applications like this is to split such an application into front-end and back-end (done that) and have every user run the same copy of the front end across the network using run-time Access and Citrix (done that too). I should add, that I’m supposed to spend as little time as possible getting this working in this environment, so certain niceties go out of the window.
One quirk of the system is that it has a number of things which it calls “reports” but which are nothing more than datasheet views of portions of the data generated by various queries. Previously the users could even input via these (thus completely bypassing the proper forms and their validation) but I’ve stopped that happening. A few people are now using this centralised version and someone’s come along and pointed out that they can no longer sort these “reports” in whatever order they wish (because the toolsbars and popup menus which allowed them to sort and filter before don’t exist under run-time) and asked if I could re-enable this feature.
OK, sure, I can build a new toolbar, popup menu or whatever to do this, but this has a knock-on effect I hadn’t considered: once you change the sort order or filtering of a query in datasheet view, when you close it, it notices that you’ve modified the query and asks if you want to save it. It does this whether you’re running full Access or Access RT and whether you’re using an MDB or MDE. If you change the security on the query object so it’s readonly, you still get prompted (though as it can’t overwrite the existing version, it forces you to save to an external object or database). As each user used to have their own copy of the front end before, this wasn’t too much of a problem, but now there is a shared front end I’d rather they didn’t get prompted, and I certainly don’t want anyone changing the queries just to suit themselves but no-one else.
Does anyone know quick way of implementing the capability of allowing users to sort (and, I guess, filter) on the results of a query in datasheet view without Access subsequently asking them if they want to save their changes?
Thanks,
Simon
