Property Merging in the Access Property Sheet

An interesting scenario is to verify specific property pages can be invoked from the merged Access control property sheet. When your control is selected in either form or report design view, select View | Properties from the menus. The properties defined by the control will be merged with the extender object that wraps the control and provides properties common to other Access intrinsic controls. The ActiveX Control’s properties are listed on the Other and All tabs on this property sheet below the Custom property. Ensure that for your control all of the properties (excluding hidden properties) are shown in this merged property sheet. This includes read-only properties as well. Also, ensure that the "…" builder button next to the Custom property invokes the all of the property pages for the control, given that the control supplies property pages.

Further down the list of properties in the sheet, specific properties will require only showing a single property page, like the Color property page for the BackColor property in the case of the Calendar Control, or only the General property page for the Month property. Click on the builder button next to these properties to see the single property page invoked. If applicable, ensure for your control that changes can be made to the properties on these pages, and then applied or cancelled, and the appropriate settings based on your actions have been propagated back to the merged property sheet. These properties can get converted to different types as the settings are propagated back to the property sheet. Also, verify that you can set each of these properties from within the Access merged property sheet directly.

It is also important to ensure the properties that supply a list of enumerated names instead of the underlying integer value that is persisted, show the correct strings in the merged property sheet. For example, in the Calendar Control that ships with Access, the GridCellEffect property displays a dropdown in the merged property sheet with the strings "Flat", "Raised", and "Sunken". Ensure that selecting each type of enumerated name sets the property to the appropriate value, and that typing the enumerated name into the property sheet works as well.

If you have any read-only properties, try setting the properties through the merged property sheet and verify that an acceptable error is displayed.

Verify that setting invalid values and data of the incorrect type for each control property returns an acceptable error. These errors should be similar to the errors returned by the control when invalid values are entered in the control's property pages as well.