Bug In CommandButton Accelerator Key Code

[Guest]

Just discovered a trivial but annoying bug in MS Access 2003 SP1 (possibly in
original Office 2003 release as well). Steps to reproduce as follows:

Design new form, place CommandButton object on it and set button Caption
property to 'This && T&hat'

What Access SHOULD do is display the caption on the button with a single
ampersand between 'This' and 'That' and the 'h' in 'That' as underlined to
show the user that it's the accelerator key.

What it ACTUALLY does is get it half right. It correctly interprets the
double ampersand as meaning "I want a literal single ampersand character" but
it then miscounts which character should be underlined as the accelerator and
wrongly makes it the 'a' in 'That' rather than the 'h'.

When the form is actually running, the correct character (the 'h') is acted
on as the accelerator but because the button displays the 'a' as the
accelerator, the user is never going to know they should be using 'h' rather
than 'a'.

 

[Guest]

It does save it but the second form doesn't get those control values filled
in. SO when i close it I get the whole duplicaiton error thing. How do i
fix it?

 

[Joan Wild]

Confirmed in 2003 SP1

Works as expected in 2002 and 2000.

Reported.

 

[Guest]

Just out of curiosity, how does one report a problem, and what does reporting
a problem accomplish? I realize that MS occasionally fixes problems, but how
do they decide which ones they are going to patch? I have reported web site
problems and other issues, but I have no reason to think anybody has actually
seen anything I have written.

 

[Guest]

A very good question! I notice that Microsoft's website is not exactly laden
with links that allow you to do this (as this might imply their software is
less than perfect) so I posted the problem here in the hope that someone from
MS would notice. I have reported other bugs in the past via their UK support
line but it takes such a long time hanging on the line being passed between
highly sceptical departments that I can't face it any more. I don't enjoy
public humiliation so I do check my facts very carefully before posting or
ringing them but I appreciate that not everyone that rings them is as
methodical. Still annoying though.

Robert Cowan
Access Developer
PS: I'm a Brit so you'll have to put up with the UK spelling of sceptical in
the same way that we have to put up with US spelling everywhere else ;-)

 

[Joan Wild]

If you go to
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus.aspx
you'll see a section to report a problem with the website and another one to
submit suggestions/ideas (I'd use this). You can also call product support
(link on that page).

You can also use the web interface to the newsgroups, and post a suggestion
that others can vote on.

As for how they decide what to patch? I don't know all of the
considerations, but I imagine they take into account how many users are
likely to be affected by a bug (and whether there's an easy workaround),
whether it is something catastrophic (like writing changes to the wrong
record), whether fixing it might break a dozen other things, etc.

 

[BruceM]

Thanks for the reply. I might as well keep reporting, in case it does get
heard. The problem is that sometimes I am frustrated and fuming when I make
a post, which surely makes any human reader at the other end less inclined
to be receptive.

 

[Joan Wild]

So don't send it right away. Save it in drafts for a couple of hours; then
reread it/edit later when you've calmed down.