Font Dialog Box

Question

In Access 2000, I want to make the Font dialog box available when a user clicks a button on a form. My intention is to let a user select a font and font size for use when printing address labels.

Can someone suggest Visual Basic code I can use to display the Font dialog box?

Answer 1

See the reply by Geof in http://vbcity.com/forums/t/141908.aspx. You can download a sample database with - among many other things - code for a font dialog.

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Regards, Hans Vogelaar

Answer 2

Thanks, Hans.

I tried to go to the web site you suggested, several times, but always got the response that the site is unavailable. I hiope that's just temporary.

Answer 3

Lebans also has a demo using the winAPI for this, see below thread:

http://www.lebans.com/fontcolordialog.htm

Hope this helps,

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Daniel van den Berg | Washington, USA | "Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy"

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Answer 4

I can't get to that page either now - try the one suggested by Daniel.

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Regards, Hans Vogelaar

Answer 5

I went to the web site Daniel recommended. From there, I downloaded the file ChooseFontColorDialog.zip. That contained over four pages of uncommented, complex code. It's going to take several hours for me to figure out what that code is doing.

Surely, there's a simpler way to use the Fint dialog box?

Answer 6

The code is complicated, but you don't have to understand it.

Import the modFontPicker dialog into your database.

As an example, to let the user change the font of the text box txtAddress on a form, use

    Call test_DialogFont(Me.txtAddress)

You can use this line in the On Click event of a command button, or in the On Dbl Click event of the text box, or whatever.

That's it!

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Regards, Hans Vogelaar

Answer 7

It would be great to understand it, but as Hans stated you don't have too perse.

Follow the instructions as Hans give you and you would be good to go.

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Daniel van den Berg | Washington, USA | "Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy"

Please vote an answer helpful if they helped. Please mark an answer(s) as an answer when your question is being answered.

Answer 8

I disagree about not having to understand the code. As a matter of principle, I never incorporate code that I don't understand in an application that I'll release to users.

Some time in the future, a user is likely to come up with a problem or extra requirement that affects the code. If I don't understand the code: mud on my face!

Answer 9

Good for you, if you want to understand the code, you need to dig into API and VBA.

You have to make some time for that.

Some API's are easy to figure out, this one is quite complex to figure out.

To give you some heads up, I give you some basic explanation below with the logic on how it's build up and what it does.

For more info on the ChooseFont WinAPI in combination with the Common Dialog WINAPI, see below threads:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms645524(v=vs.85).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms646914(v=vs.85).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms646832(v=vs.85).aspx

The code:

The 1st part are Constants and Types being used as handlers and variables mainly for the Win API's.

Then the 2nd part are the declarations of the WinAPI's (ChooseFont, GlobalLock, GlobalAlloc, CopyMemory, GetDeviceCaps and GetDC). Note: They are 32-bit API's. When using 64-bit windows, you need to convert these to 64-bit. Info on this you can find in below thread:

http://www.jkp-ads.com/articles/apideclarations.asp

Then the 3rd part are help functions (MulDiv, ByteToString, StringToByte) to do some calculations and conversions of data.

The 4th part function DialogFont is basicly creating the Font Dialog window with info, calling the WinAPI's and help functions created in earlier stage.

The last part Function test_DialogFont is calling the function DialogFont and with that you can change the font settings with the Control you have used.

Hope this helps,

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Daniel van den Berg | Washington, USA | "Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy"

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Answer 10

Many thanks, Danishani, for all the help. I'll be looking at the sites you suggested. Thanks, especially for taking the time to provide an explanation of the Leblanc code.

Although I've been developing Access applications since the days of Access 2.0, I've so far been able to avoid referring to API functions. Now I'll bite the bullet, as they say, and work at getting my mind around how to work with API functions.

Answer 11

You are welcome, and goodluck with learning the API functions! :)

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Daniel van den Berg | Washington, USA | "Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy"

Please vote an answer helpful if they helped. Please mark an answer(s) as an answer when your question is being answered.

Answer 12

I've sent several hours examining the Lebans code, and have learned a lot while doing so.

I did run into a couple of problems, but have been able to solve them.

When the text_DialogFont function first ran, the compiler did not like the statement:

    ctl = .Name & " - Size: " & .Height

I changed that statement to:

    ctl.ControlTipText = .Name & " - Size: " & .Height

That solved the problem. My guess is that might be what Lebans intended?

Also, when I changed the font color in the dialog box, the color change did not appear in the text.

I solved that problem by inserting the statement:

    ctl.Forecolor = .color

Now all works fine.

Thanks to you all for your help.