Highlight Current Record

Overview

Make it easier to see the current record on your Microsoft Access forms! To highlight the current record with a yellow background color, use Conditional Formatting, a control to keep track of the primary key value, a control to change color, and a little VBA. See how it works in this video:

While designing, I like to increase the height of the detail section, create a shorter txtHighlight control below everything else on the ruler, set all the properties, then move txt Highlight up, close the height of the detail section, and then set the Height of txtHighlight to whatever the section turns out to be.

Once the controls are created, write VBA code and set Conditional Formatting.

MyPrimaryKey is the name of your primary key control such as ProductID, OrderID, ContactID, etc. The expression in a Conditional Formatting rule can refer to control names or field names.

If you are using a datasheet form instead of a continuous form, you can't have a control under all the others, so set the conditional formatting rule on every control. You can then select all the textboxes and set the rule.

To specify code for an event

select the object you want such as the form or a control
go to the Event tab of the property sheet
choose [Event Procedure] or pick it from the list -- or just type "[" to pick [Event Procedure]
Click the builder button [...], or press Ctrl+F2, to go to the Visual Basic Editor
Access will automatically create the Sub declaration and End Sub Statements.
Type what you want to happen between the procedure declaration and End statements.

Steps

Go to the Design View of the form

Select all controls in the Detail section that you want the highlight to appear behind, and set:

Back Style = Transparent

expand detail section to be taller to give yourself some working space

Grab bottom of detail section border and drag down

Create an unbound textbox control in Detail section, below other controls on the ruler (for now), to highlight the active record:

Name = txtHighlight
Left = 0
Enabled = No
Locked = Yes
TabStop = No
Width = width of form
-------------- set these later -------------
Top = 0
Height = height of section

send txtHighlight control to the back

right-click on it, choose: Position > Send to Back

set Top of txtHighlight, close space, and set Height

Top = 0 -- and then close space in Detail section
Height = height of section

Create an unbound textbox control in the form footer to keep track of the primary key.

Name = CurrentID

On the form Current event, which happens when a record changes, set CurrentID to the primary key (PK). If the PK doesn't yet have a value (new record), set it to be 0 (zero).

        Private Sub Form_Current()
            With Me
               .CurrentID = Nz(.MyPrimaryKey, 0)
            End With
         End Sub

if PK is not numeric, change optional argument for NZ to "" for text.

on the GotFocus event for txtHighlight, make the active control go somewhere else so it doesn't come to the front and cover everything

        Private Sub txtHighlight_GotFocus()
            Me.otherControlName.SetFocus
        End Sub

Compile the code. Save.

set Conditional Formatting for txtHighlight so the background color changes. Select txtHighlight and choose Conditional Formatting from Format tab on the ribbon.

click New Rule
choose: "Expression is"
enter rule:
Nz( [MyPrimaryKey], 0) = [CurrentID]
set format such as yellow for background color
OK, then OK again to dismiss conditional formatting manager

Save form and test!

Highlight Current Record with Conditional Formatting and VBA
in Microsoft Access

Download

Overview

To specify code for an event

Steps

Video

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