Microsoft Access Imaging Seminar Tutorial

Student Interaction: Access Imaging Seminar

Richard on 1/1/2007: Learn how to properly work with images and graphics in your database. This 3.5 hour seminar covers: - OLE Objects, Linking, Embedding - Display external images in forms - Browse drive to select a file - Copy to a "shared images" folder - Embed non-image objects - Display Web-based images - New Attachment data type

Richard on 3/7/2010: PLEASE NOTE: The web page for the sample database files and source code can be found in LESSON 12, about 1:41 into the video.

�James on 3/8/2010: Great Class again Rick. Keep the VBA comming I love it. Great stuff here. I especially like the copy to server classes.

�Dave Sterner on 3/9/2010: I am not seeing the time index you mention by at about 3 minutes when you drop the image control on the form it looks like there is a significant difference between Access 2007 and 2003. With my Access 2003, when I add the image control it automatically starts to browse for a picture and when I click cancel in the browse window, the image box gets deleted. To get an empty box, I had to load a picture and delete it from the picture property of the image control just like in the previous lesson.

�Rupert Bennett on 3/9/2010: Hi Richard, I hit a snag while working through the Images Seminar. I am using Access 2003 and am tyring to use the Common Dialog DLL. I am not saving to a server, so I have my VB Code as EmployeePicture = (me, "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Samples") I am getting the following error "Wrong number of arguments or invalid property assignment" Can you spot my mistake? Thanks for your help. Rupert

Reply from Richard Rost:

Rupert, remember you're working with the picture PROPERTY of your image control. Change your code to: EmployeePicture.PICTURE = (me, "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\Samples")

�Dave Sterner on 3/9/2010: You might want to warn students about making the EmployeePicture field (the one that contains the path) text size larger than 50. I tried to load some jpg's from my MyDocuments\MyPictures folder and got an error message telling me my field was too small.

Reply from Richard Rost:

Thanks Dave. You just did. :)

�Dave Sterner on 3/9/2010: Correction on my previous comment about cancelling out of the image object not being able to get an empty image box - I have Access 2002

Reply from Richard Rost:

Yep. I think I mentioned that in the video for 2003 and earlier users.

�Rupert Bennett on 3/12/2010: At 08:25 in this lesson, we are comparing the length of the string in the Imagesfolder to determine if we need to copy up to the server. What if we are in another folder on the server, with the length of the PathFilename identical to that of the ImagesFolder? Would that not create a problem?

Reply from Richard Rost:

It's not just the length we're checking... we're comparing the beginning of the folder string to see if it's identical to the same length of string from the chosen file. I did think of one problem, however. If you have your Images folder set to: C:\ Then any file you choose on the C:\ drive will show up as being in the Images folder for the purposes of this function. I suppose a better algorithm is needed. Until I have a few minutes to come up with one, just make sure your Images folder name is UNIQUE on your hard drive, like: C:\Data\dbImages\ Or something like that - something that's not going to be easily confused with another folder.

Ray�McCain on 5/6/2010: The image files which I am copying have been set up in multiple album amd sub-album folders, which I need to include in the complete pathfilename. How do I set up a mid string to identify everything between C:\Images\ and the filename and then be able to include it along with the pathname. It is also possible that no album name exists so I would need to check for an empty string and ignore it if one is found.

Reply from Richard Rost:

Hmmm... how about making "C:\images\" your root folder, and then just including any subfolder information either in another field, or as part of the image filename. You would then store your images relative to the root folder. For example: joe.gif subfolder\sue.jpg another\subfolder\bill.gif Would this work for you?

�Alan Hill on 5/6/2010: The launchCD function is just what I have been looking for. It even opens up at the correct folder. That's great. I love it. Thankyou very much.

Reply from Richard Rost:

That's what you pay me for. :) LOL

Alan Hill on 5/6/2010: Hi Richard Common Dialog DLL I know the length of my filepath. N = Len(filepath): P = Len(FullPath) L = P-N so I used ImageTitle = Right(FullPath,L)to get the ImageTitle Seems to work OK Just about to watch copy files to server Best wishes Alan Hill

Reply from Richard Rost:

Good approach.

Ray�McCain on 5/21/2010: Due to the use of multiple folders to set up the albums needed for this photo directory, I need to retreive the entire path all the way to FileFolder which ends with "Images\". Since the backslash is in all likelihood not the last one in the path name, I need to know how to rewrite the mid or instr functions to accomidate this.

Reply from Richard Rost:

You can start from the end of the string containing the path/filename to isolate just the pathname. I would start a loop that looks for that last backslash. Let's say you have: S = "C:\Users\Richard\Images\something.jpg" X = len(S) While X > 0 and mid(S,X,1)<>"\" X = X - 1 Wend Now you have the position of the last "\" in the string. At this point you can cut off the filename, which you can do with: S = left(S,X) Now you have just: S = "C:\Users\Richard\Images\" If you want to get what's BEFORE the Images\ folder, you can now just chop that off: S = Left(S,Len(S)-7) Since you know that "Images\" is 7 characters. Now you're left with: S = "C:\Users\Richard\" Hopefully this is what you're trying to find. Now, I haven't fully tested this (it's off the top of my head) and I didn't add any error handling (what if there are no \ in the string?) but it should get you started.

�Lynn on 7/5/2010: So Far I have enjoyed the Access Imaging Seminar

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