Vertical text

[Geoff Taylor]

I have a report in which some labels use vertical text.
The text by default is rotated clockwise 90 degrees.

Is there some known method of displaying text vertically, but rotated
counterclockwise, or are we stuck with the default?

 

[Marshall Barton]

I have a report in which some labels use vertical text.
The text by default is rotated clockwise 90 degrees.

Is there some known method of displaying text vertically, but rotated
counterclockwise, or are we stuck with the default?

You may want to try using the rotate text code at:
www.lebans.com

 

[Geoff Taylor]

Marshall...

Thanks for the tip.
However, the technique shown in the Lebans example appears to be only for
labels and the resultant rotated text is an image. If a label has a data
source, then changes are not reflected in the rotated text because it is an
image.

I also found that it was not particularly stable in Access2000 and 2002. I
found that the particular font I first tested did not rotate, even though
the image bounding box apparently did. Using a stock standard font such as
Times was ok though.

 

[Stephen Lebans]

There are two methods for rotating Text on my site. THe Metafile based
method you refer to uses a Label control as the source for the Text to
be rotated. Just use a Label control with its Visible prop set to NO. TO
simulate a Bound control simply set the Caption property of the Label
control prior to calling the RotateText function.

The second method is for users who are not comfortable with VBA coding
and I would suggest it is a better fit for you. It is an ActiveX control
with an exposed COntrolSource so that the control can be directly bound
to an Access field.

I do not appreciate your statement that my solution is not stable in A2K
or A2K2. My solution requires that you use a TRUE TYPE font only. It
sounds like you selected a a standard windows Bitmap font.

--

HTH
Stephen Lebans
http://www.lebans.com
Access Code, Tips and Tricks
Please respond only to the newsgroups so everyone can benefit.

Marshall...

Thanks for the tip.
However, the technique shown in the Lebans example appears to be only for
labels and the resultant rotated text is an image. If a label has a data
source, then changes are not reflected in the rotated text because it is an
image.

I also found that it was not particularly stable in Access2000 and 2002. I
found that the particular font I first tested did not rotate, even though
the image bounding box apparently did. Using a stock standard font such as
Times was ok though.

 

[Geoff Taylor]

Thanks for the tips Stephen...

I had not investigated the active x solution fully.
This one is definitely more applicable to the application I am working on.

Basically, after installing the Active X component, I can now open a rotated
text object and bind it to a table value so that the object is updated on
formatting a report.

The solution is working quite well...thanks!

However, there are some quirks with formatting the rotated text.
1
Using the controls for forground and background colour for example.
I needed to set grey text on a white background.
Setting foreground to grey, to make the text grey, produced a grey
background with black text.
Setting background back to white, set the text to white on a grey
background.
The only way I could achieve what I needed was to cut and paste the
numerical values between these two properties.
The controls for colour seemed to work in unexpected ways.
Once, the colour requester changed to the default colour requester for all
objects?
2
Another problem arose when I produced a white text on black background
rotated text object.
In order to fit into the exisiting report, the border also needed to be
black.
Any selection of border for the object appeared to automatically apply a 1pt
black border and obliterated the contents of the object with white. The only
values I could apply for border apeared to be a transparent border. I had to
produce a rectangle object with hairline black border to overlay the rotated
text object to mask the thin white borders.

There are two methods for rotating Text on my site. THe Metafile based
method you refer to uses a Label control as the source for the Text to
be rotated. Just use a Label control with its Visible prop set to NO. TO
simulate a Bound control simply set the Caption property of the Label
control prior to calling the RotateText function.

The second method is for users who are not comfortable with VBA coding
and I would suggest it is a better fit for you. It is an ActiveX control
with an exposed COntrolSource so that the control can be directly bound
to an Access field.

I do not appreciate your statement that my solution is not stable in A2K
or A2K2. My solution requires that you use a TRUE TYPE font only. It
sounds like you selected a a standard windows Bitmap font.

--

HTH
Stephen Lebans
http://www.lebans.com
Access Code, Tips and Tricks
Please respond only to the newsgroups so everyone can benefit.