Hi folks

I'm puzzled again and am looking for some suggestions.

Summary: a dialog form is not visible, but only on a machine with Access 2007 Runtime installed.

Full version:
I have a program with separate backend files, designed to be used in a multiuser environment. The "client" machines will generally only have the Runtime version of Access 2007 on.

I have some code which, on startup, checks to see if the linked BE files are available. If they are not, I could go straight to the code which invites the user to find the right location for the files. However, I have found that with Windows networking being as unreliable as it is, by far the most likely reason for the files not being found is that there is a network problem, in which case I need to ask users to try to fix that first.

So, I have a nice simple dialog form (Popup and Modal both set to yes). It is not bound to any data. There is some descriptive text and a couple of buttons, one to close the program and another to initiate finding the files.

On my main development machine (Access 2007 full copy installed) it works fine: if I start the program and the files aren't where they were last time, the problem is detected and the form pops up.

However, if I then try to do the same on a secondary machine (Runtime installed) it doesn't work. The problem is detected, but the form is not popped up correctly. It is as if it is there, but not visible: the modal property means I can't do anything except force a close from Windows. Further, the Status Bar text is set as I would expect if the form were open.

It gets more puzzling yet. On my development machine, if I change the front end ".accdb" to ".accdr", forcing it into Runtime mode, it works fine.

And I don't think it is anything to do with the way I am opening the form from my code (DoCmd.OpenForm "Formname")(with or without ,,,,,acDialog). As a test, I put a button on my main data entry form - just a standard macro to open the form. Again, this works on my development machine in either full or runtime mode, but does not work on the secondary machine.

Both machines are running Windows 7.

There are many other forms in this program, including a few dialog forms, and they are all working fine in all cases.

I'm completely stuck: any ideas?

TIA

I suppose it could be an issue with runtime
do you change the value of any labels?
do you change the design of the form
it could be that runtime thinks you are changing the design of the form and chokes.

alternatively it could be that you are missing something from the build of the runtime. its years since I last tinkered with runtime and it always seemed to be a finicky beast to configure correctly.

it could be an error is being reported... try a generic on error statement and see if an error is being reported

Hello - thanks for the quick response (again!).

As it happens I've just fixed it ... it wasn't anything to do with "runtime" at all (I should have known from the fact that the Dev machine works ok with an accdr).

So there must be another relevant difference ... and it is that the dev machine has two screens, and the other machine only one!!!

Access was trying to display the form on a secondary display that wasn't there (you'd think it would be smart enough not to do that, but never mind).

The fix was to set "Auto Center" to "yes" on the form's properties!!

Thanks
Ceejay