Graphics on report

[BruceM]

My situation is that I have a report that is to contain graphics that are
facsimiles of signatures. I know that storing graphics increases the file
size, but the graphics files are quite small (20 - 30 KB). I realize that
Access creates an extra version of stored graphics or something like that,
so the file size increases by more than the 20 KB for each picture, but the
database file size is still prettty reasonable.
There are two reasons why I would consider storing the graphic in a table.
It would be stored once in a single table, by the way, not in multiple
records. One is that I can't figure out how to link to the graphic. If I
link, do I store the link as a Hyperlink field, or what? How do I get the
linked graphic to appear on the report? Bound object frame or what?
The second reason I would consider storing the graphics is that there are to
be changes to our network, and linked objects may very well be in a
different location in the future, meaning that I would have to redefine all
of the links.
Any suggestions on how to proceed?

 

[SA]

Bruce:

1.) Don't store the image in your report.
2.) In your table, store the path to the person's particular graphic in a
text field.
3.) On your report add an Image control and insert any signature file.
4.) In the section of the report that contains the image control add a
control linked to the path to the image for the particular record. You can
set this control's visible property to false to not display it.
5.) In the same section of the report, in the On Print event for that
section add code like this:

Me!NameOfYourImageControl.Picture = Me!NameOfTheControlWithPathToImage

HTH

 

[BruceM]

Thanks a lot, that did the trick. I had seen similar instructions, but
wasn't quite sure what an image control was (I think I was trying to use a
bound object frame). Also, I had imagined adding the path would be more
complicated than referencing a text box. That was the missing element in my
previous attempts.

I have another question. It is a query question, and this isn't exactly the
newsgroup for it, but I'll ask anyhow. I have a single table (tblRFI) for
storing information about recommendations (recommendation, response,
follow-up, and final approval). tblRFI has three "signature" fields
(QM_Sig, etc.), which are text fields containing the names of the people who
work on the recommendation. A person must provide a password in order to
"sign" (add their name to) a section of the recommendation.
tblPassword is a listing of employees who may work on the recommendations.
The three queries (qryQual, qryResp, qryFol) in the SQL below are derived
from tblPassword. The Signature field is the text field you suggested (the
path to a file).
The problem is that the record does not appear in the Select query unless
all of the Sig fields (QM_Sig, RespSig, FolSig) contain values. I would
like for the query to include all records, including recommendations that
are in progress (and therefore do not have all fields completed).

SELECT tblRFI.*, qryResp.Signature, qryQual.Signature, qryFol.Signature

FROM ((tblRFI INNER JOIN qryQual ON tblRFI.QM_Sig = qryQual.ID) INNER JOIN
qryResp ON tblRFI.ResponseSig = qryResp.ID) INNER JOIN qryFol ON
tblRFI.FollowUpSig = qryFol.ID;