I have an Access batabasd in which I want to validate that the month is 

enteres as January, Febreuary,March.....December.



I created an event procedure and attach to the LostFocus event.



The Message box pops up but the focus is not being set as coded. The 

cursor moves to the next control.  Also, when I enter January the message 

box still pops up.



I am new to VB and know that this is a simple error I am making in my 

code.  Would someone review the code and assistance in resolving this.



Thank you all.



EVENT PROCEDURE:





Private Sub Month_Of_LostFocus()   'Name of the txexbox is Month_Of

    Dim theMonth(0 To 11) As String, i As Integer

    theMonth(0) = "January"

    theMonth(1) = "February"

    theMonth(2) = "March"

    theMonth(3) = "April"

    theMonth(4) = "May"

    theMonth(5) = "June"

    theMonth(6) = "July"

    theMonth(7) = "August"

    theMonth(8) = "September"

    theMonth(9) = "October"

    theMonth(10) = "November"

    theMonth(11) = "December"

        For i = 0 To 11

            If Month_Of.Text <> theMonth(i) Then

                MsgBox ("Enter month in the format January, or April")

            Month_Of.SetFocus

            Exit Sub

            End If

        Next i          

                

        

End Sub







Howard Stone

Hi Howard,



Can you give some context as to what you're doing. From what little I see,

it might be easier for you and for your end users not to have to type in

the months. A combo box with the month list would be a much easier way for

the end user to enter the months. Also are these months based on some date

field elswhere in your database? If so, perhaps you can just format a date

entry such as 10/15/01 to read "October."

Have you considered a combobox containing the month "Names"? Is this a

separate field in the table or is it derived from a date field? The answers

may elicit some other ideas.



Walt

Thanks for the assistance.  I now learn from the responses that a combo 

box would be easier for the end used and myself.  I have actually done it 

quite easily with the combo box as suggested and it worked.



Since I am newbie and for my own programming skills I will still ask what 

I was doing wrong for my code not to work?.



I want to be a good programmer and do not want to just forget about what I 

was doing even though I was shown an easier method.  Knowing my mistaked 

from this exercise will make me a better programmer.



The fields do not originate from a table.  I aslo thought of entering the 

date and format it to show Jamuary but decided to use the array method 

because of my limited knowledge.



So, please review the code and tell me my mistakes.





Thanks a million



Howard Stone

I think the biggest problem was that you were checking the value in your

text box against each of the twelve valid values one at a time and on the

first mismatch you returned an error and exited the sub.  Here's the code

I'm talking about:



        For i = 0 To 11

            If Month_Of.Text <> theMonth(i) Then

                MsgBox ("Enter month in the format January, or April")

                Month_Of.SetFocus

                Exit Sub

            End If

        Next i          



The problem is that even a valid value can only be equal to *one* of the

twelve values at a time--even valid values will fail 11 of the twelve

comparisons.  For instance if the user entered "February", then when this

loop was first entered and i = 0, the comparison in your If statement

("February" <> "January) would return True and the code would give the error

msg and terminate.



I can think of two other approaches.  If you like the array solution, you

can use an extra variable like so:





'==================================================

Dim booIsValid as Boolean

...

        booIsValid = False

        For i = 0 To 11

            ' Note the change to equals in this If-Then statement:

            If Month_Of.Text = theMonth(i) Then

               booIsValid = True

            End If

        Next i          



        ' Now we've compared the entered value to each of the twelve

        ' valid values & if entered matched *any* of the valid values

        ' booIsValid would be set to True



        If booIsValid Then

            ' Do nothing

        Else

            MsgBox ("Enter month in the format January, or April")

            Month_Of.SetFocus

        End If



'==================================================



But probably easiest would be a Select Case statement like so:



'==================================================

    Select Case Month_Of.Value

        Case "January", "February", "March", _

             "April", "May", "June, _

             "July", "August", "September", _

             "October", "November", "December"

             ' Do nothing

        Case Else

            MsgBox ("Enter month in the format January, or April")

            Month_Of.SetFocus 

    End Select

'==================================================



HTH,



-Roy



Roy Pardee

Programmer/Analyst

SWFPAC Lockheed Martin IT

Extension 8487



-----Original Message-----

From: Howard Stone [mailto:ququmber@h...]

Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 5:09 AM

To: Access

Subject: [access] Re: month validation





Thanks for the assistance.  I now learn from the responses that a combo 

box would be easier for the end used and myself.  I have actually done it 

quite easily with the combo box as suggested and it worked.



Since I am newbie and for my own programming skills I will still ask what 

I was doing wrong for my code not to work?.



I want to be a good programmer and do not want to just forget about what I 

was doing even though I was shown an easier method.  Knowing my mistaked 

from this exercise will make me a better programmer.



The fields do not originate from a table.  I aslo thought of entering the 

date and format it to show Jamuary but decided to use the array method 

because of my limited knowledge.



So, please review the code and tell me my mistakes.





Thanks a million



Howard Stone