Chapter 31: Distributing Access Applications
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Ribbon Name
The Ribbon Name option lets you specify a customized (usually trimmed-down) version of the
Access ribbon. If you don’t supply a ribbon name, Access uses its built-in ribbon, which might be
inappropriate for your application. The default ribbon contains many controls for modifying data-
base objects, which might lead to problems with your users.
You must close and reopen the current database for this change to take effect.
Shortcut Menu Bar
Setting the Shortcut Menu Bar changes the default menu for shortcut menus (right-click menus) to
a menu bar that you specify. Using custom shortcut menus that have functionality specific to your
application is always preferable.
You must close and reopen the current database for this change to take effect.
Allow Full Menus
Checking the Allow Full Menus box determines whether Access displays all the commands in its
menus or just the frequently used commands. If you supply custom menus for all your forms and
reports and set the Menu Bar property to a custom menu bar, this setting has no effect.
You must close and reopen the current database for this change to take effect.
Allow Default Shortcut Menus
The Allow Default Shortcut Menus setting determines whether Access displays its own default
shortcut menus when a user right-clicks an object in the Navigation Pane or a control on a form or
report.
You must close and reopen the current database for this change to take effect.
Name AutoCorrect Options
Several chapters in this book mention the problems associated with changing the names of funda-
mental database objects such as tables and fields within tables. For example, if you change the
name of a table, everywhere you refer to that table (a query, a control’s ControlSource prop-
erty, VBA code, a macro, and so on) becomes invalid, causing the application to malfunction.
Microsoft added the Name AutoCorrect feature to Access 2000 as a way of mitigating the problems
that inevitably occur when database objects are renamed. Unfortunately, this feature has never
worked quite as well as Microsoft had hoped. Primarily, Name AutoCorrect is a major drag on per-
formance. Because Access must constantly monitor activity while Access is used, a database with
this option selected runs noticeably slower than it does when the option is turned off. Plus, there
are far too many places where an object’s name may appear for an AutoCorrect feature to effec-
tively capture every instance when the object is renamed. This is especially true of object names
appearing in VBA code; many applications contain hundreds of thousands of lines of VBA code,
making it virtually impossible to find and update every object reference.