• Vanishing Labels (A2k SR1)

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    #383208

    A Report that has been used for many months has several labels on it that have suddenly vanished when the report is opened. You can see the labels in the form design mode but cant see them when the report is open (so I know they are there).
    Any ideas on why this may be happening.

    I have compacted the db, copied the report to a new report, checked the label properties such as visible, and tried other variations but the labels are still gone. The labels appear in the Report Header, Footer, and detail sections.

    Interestingly enough, I have a backup of the report in the same database that where the labels are still visible.

    What could have caused this. I am baffled? dizzy

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    • #652762

      Hi Gary
      Why don’t you post your DB or just the appropriate bits and let us have a look.
      Pat cheers

      • #652896

        Patt,

        The database is just too big and full of data I can’t post. (Company Propietary). But, I may strip part of it down if I can’t figure it out.

    • #652817

      Is there anything on top of the labels? Are the labels being manipulated in code at all?

      • #652897

        Charlotte,

        There isn’t anything on top of the labels. I am not manipulating the labels via code but this did occur after I ran a test on creating a recordset that moves through records and then opens the report and prints the report for each record as it moves through the recordset.

        For example, there are 100 employees. Users want to print this report for each employee which they can do now by selecting an employee name and other data via comboboxes and then running the report. The users said they would like to print the report for all employees at once without the need to do this manually, one at a time. I created a recordset that loops through the data and then opens /prints the report for each record. The process works great, that is the data prints, but, the labels vanished when I did this. (I really need the labels).

        But now when I go back to the original way of running the report, one at a time, the labels are gone as well.

        Thanks for your help.

        • #652901

          I would suggest you bring in a copy of the report from your backup and start applying your changes one at a time. Make sure your labels are connected to their controls if they are attached labels. I can’t really visualize what you’re doing, but that should at least give you a working report to play with so you can try to determine where it is breaking down. You may find that your old report simply got corrupted along the way and the backup copy will accept the changes an work properly. In that case, just replace the old report once you have the new one working.

          Is your form opening the report using the filtername or the wherecondition argument of OpenReport? I know a lot of people like to filter the report but I prefer using the wherecondition to limit the recordset.

          • #652916

            Charlotte,

            Deleting the old report and bringing up the backup worked without any problems. (… and why didn’t I think of trying this) I guess the old report got corrupted??? I am not using the where condition open argument when opening the report (although it makes sense to do it this way) but am applying the filter through the form to the query driving the report. …. probably not a good way to do this but it works.

            Thanks for your help once again.

    • #652826

      Have you changed/installed printer?

    • #658308

      Just to make you feel better, not that I can help, I’ve experienced this myself with one database — horrible thing. One day the labels are there, the next day they are totally blank and don’t work ever again. I have also had similar problems w/ headers in the reports in this same database. Of course, the formatting has been pretty worked over, the database was converted from 2.0 to 97, the printer that I am attaching to is an older model — several things that may cause grief. I have remade my labels and reports a couple of times.
      thx
      Pat

      • #658349

        A couple of suggestions to deal with this kind of problem:

        • always keep a design master of your database that isn’t used by users – corruption is a fact of life for Access databases because of PC crashes, network faults, user finger poking, etc. There are a couple of ways to do this – Visual Source Safe, and replication – but just keeping a copy that is uptodate works too.
        • split your database and put the forms, reports, and code on the user PC – there are some tools available to ease the problem of deploying changes – see our website and that of FMS
        • if you can, make and MDE to deploy on user workstations – they seem to corrupt less frequently – another trick if the user isn’t allowed to make changes in the front-end is to make the file read-only at the OS level.
          [/list]Hope this is useful.
        • #658358

          Hi, Wendell,
          Thanks for your suggestions — I usually split the database (after working out the kinks), and I agree — if one person corrupts their front-end, I can just replace it.
          The difficulty I was having — interestingly enough, I duplicated today while working in the same database — and I found that if I up-sized the fields beyond a certain point, that caused them to “vanish” — so, I kept reducing and incrementally resizing, although that’s probably not the best way. Anyway, I immediately saw the reason for the “Vanishing” this time, and was able to recover — it’s possible that was the only reason for this occurence in the past. However, I _have_ remade some of these reports for this database enough, that I do keep up master backups, now . I also got to the point that I saved iterations of the report — so, if I got tothe point where it “blew,” I could just go back to the previous good iteration.
          Thanks for the information on the .mde possibly being less prone to corruption, that’s also another good thing to keep tucked in my mind.
          Appreciate the advice!
          thx
          Pat W.

      • #658458

        Thanks for the note Pat.

        The correction was to delete the old form and bring up a backup of the form. The database was never converted and had been working without error for quite a while. Why this one particular form decided to do this, who knows? Anyway, it hasn’t happened again. Thanks for the info.

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