Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 11: Mastering VBA Data Types and Procedures .............................................................

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One particularly powerful use of the continuation character is illustrated later in this chapter (in

Figure 11.14). In Figure 11.14, a long SQL statement is split across a number of lines of code. All

that’s needed on each subsequent line is the concatenation character (&) and as much of the string

as you want to add on the line. Each portion of the SQL statement must be surrounded by double

quotes, and you must preserve spaces between words in the statement. Splitting long SQL state-

ments this way makes it easy to see what’s in the statement and, therefore, what fields end up in

the resulting recordset.

Most often, however, continuation characters are used to break up long, complex statements.

Figure 11.2 shows an example of this use of the continuation character. In this figure, a long VBA

statement that opens a new recordset is split into five lines of code. The continuation characters are

placed after the commas separating the elements contained in the complex statement, making the

statement easier to read and understand.

FIGURE 11.2

Use the continuation character to split long strings into multiple lines.

Continuation characters can be inserted almost anywhere within a VBA statement. (You can’t split

individual words in a statement with continuation characters.) It makes sense, therefore, to insert

the continuation character sequence in places (such as in Figure 11.2) that add to the readability of

long statements. In Figure 11.2, inserting a continuation after each comma breaks the statement

into logical sections. Putting continuations anywhere else in this statement would make it harder

to read.

Another powerful feature of the Access code editor is the text colors used to set aside comments,

keywords, and identifiers. Although it’s not obvious in this book’s figures, the comments in Figure

11.1 and Figure 11.2 appear in a green font, while the VBA keywords like Function, Const,

and If are blue. Identifiers like conObjStateClosed and conDesignView, as well as the pro-

cedure name IsLoaded in Figure 11.1, are black.