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To create a floating pop-up menu, follow these steps:
- Start Microsoft Access and open any database.
- Create a new form called Pop-up Menu Form.
- Add a list box control called Menu to the form. Make the control large enough so that it is able to display each of the strings it will contain without displaying a scroll bar. Set the control's properties as follows:
Name: Menu
RowSourceType: Value List
RowSource: String1;String2;String3;String4
AfterUpdate: =ItemSelected([Menu])
Left: 0 in
Top: 0 in
FontName: System
FontSize: 8
FontWeight: Bold
NOTE: Specify the menu strings in the RowSource property. Separate the string values with a semicolon (;).
- Set the properties of the Pop-up Menu Form form as follows:
ScrollBars: Neither
RecordSelectors: No
NavigationButtons No
PopUp: Yes
Width: Width of the list box control
- Set the Height property of the form's Detail section to match the height of the list box.
- Save the form and close it.
- Create a new module, and then type or paste the following code in the Declarations section of the module:
' NOTE: Some of the following Windows API functions may be
' defined in an existing Microsoft Access library. If so, the new
' declarations would cause a duplication procedure name error. If
' this error occurs, remove the offending declare statement from
' your code or convert the declaration to a comment.
Option Explicit
Type POINTAPI
x As Long
y As Long
End Type
Global Const GWL_STYLE = (-16)
Global Const WS_DLGFRAME = &H400000
Declare Function GetCursorPos Lib "user32" (lpPoint As POINTAPI) _
As Long
Declare Function GetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "GetWindowLongA" _
(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal nIndex As Long) As Long
Declare Function SetWindowLong Lib "user32" Alias "SetWindowLongA" _
(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal nIndex As Long, ByVal dwNewLong _
As Long) As Long
- Type or paste the following functions:
Function ShowPopup ()
Dim coord As POINTAPI
Dim attr&
GetCursorPos coord
DoCmd.OpenForm "Pop-up Menu Form"
attr& = GetWindowLong(Forms![Pop-up Menu Form].hWnd, GWL_STYLE)
attr& = SetWindowLong(Forms![Pop-up Menu Form].hWnd, GWL_STYLE, _
attr& And Not WS_DLGFRAME)
DoCmd.MoveSize (coord.x * 14), (coord.y * 14), , 1100
End Function
Function ItemSelected (WhichItem As String)
DoCmd.Close
MsgBox "The selected item was " & Trim(WhichItem)
End Function
- Compile the module by clicking Compile database on the Debug menu.
- Select the form in which you want the pop-up menu to appear. Open the
form in Design view.
- Select the event property that you want to use to open the pop-up
menu, and then specify the following function call:
=ShowPopup()
NOTE: To better see how this step works, you may want to specify the function for the DblClick event of a text box.
When you open the form and cause the event assigned in step 11 to run,
the pop-up menu appears at the current mouse position. The menu remains on
the screen until you select an item from the pop-up menu.