Access Cookbook, 2nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Recipe 4.5 Find out What Language Version of Access Is Installed

4.5.1 Problem

You distribute your
applications in several countries, and your users have different
internationalized versions of Access installed.
You'd like your applications to be able to make
decisions based on the installed version of Access. How can you find
out which language version of Access is currently running?

4.5.2 Solution

In
older versions of Access, you had to use an API call to get this
information. However, starting with Access 2000, it is possible to
retrieve language information using the Microsoft Office Object
Library. This solution demonstrates how you can gather the language
information you need.

Load and run the form frmLanguage in

04-05.MDB .
As it loads, it calls the necessary functions to determine the
currently running language version of Access. Figure 4-10 shows the form after it's
been loaded into a retail U.S. English version of Access.

Figure 4-10. frmLanguage indicates the language version of Access that's running

To include this functionality in your own applications, follow these
steps:

1. Import the module basFileLanguage from

   04-05.MDB
   into your own application. This module includes constants
   representing the seven most commonly used languages and their related
   intrinsic constants and values.

2. Declare a long integer variable,
   lngLanguage. When your application starts
   up, make a call to

   acbAccessLanguage , which will
   return a number representing the current running language version of
   Access. You can assign this return value to the
   lngLanguage variable, as follows:

   lngLanguage = acbAccessLanguage( )

   You can then pass that variable to procedures in your application
   that make decisions based on the current language version of Access.

In the example application, the
language ID is stored in an option group, which will work only if you
are supporting a known, limited set of languages. The example also
includes code that detects the version of Access in use and whether
it is a runtime version.

4.5.3 Discussion

Retrieving language information requires
setting a reference to the Microsoft Office Object Library. You can
then refer to the Application object's
LanguageSettings property to retrieve the language being used. Each
language has its own LanguageID property, which is an integer value.
These language IDs are represented by enumerated constants. When you
set a reference to the Microsoft Office Object Library, you can see a
complete list of constants by examining the
msoLanguageID enumeration, as shown in Figure 4-11.

Figure 4-11. Each language value has a corresponding constant

The call to

acbAccessLanguage requires a simple
variable:

lngRetval = acb_apiGetLanguage( )

Or you can use a control, as we have in the example:

Me.grpLanguage = acbAccessLanguage( )

The function returns a single value,
which tells you which language version the function found. Table 4-1 lists only a few of the Windows languages and
the ID values associated with them, along with the corresponding
constants. You can see a complete list by using the Object Browser,
as shown in Figure 4-11.

 msoLanguageIDEnglishUS

 msoLanguageIDFrench

 msoLanguageIDGerman

 msoLanguageIDItalian

 msoLanguageIDRussian

 msoLanguageIDSpanish

 msoLanguageIDPortuguese

 msoLanguageIDSwedish

 msoLanguageIDZulu

The simple function in basFileLanguage,

acbAccessLanguage , returns only the national
language ID number (from Table 4-1) for the
installed version of Access:

Function acbAccessLanguage( ) As Long
acbAccessLanguage = _
Application.LanguageSettings.LanguageID(msoLanguageIDUI)
End Function

Once you know the ID for the national language, you can make choices
in your application. For example, as shown in the next two solutions,
you can modify labels on forms and reports and modify the error
messages that you display.

The example form also uses two
functions from basAccessInfo in

04-05.MDB ,

acbGetVersion and

acbIsRuntime . Both are quite simple, comprising
only calls to the built-in

SysCmd function. The
first,

acbGetVersion , returns the version number
of the currently running copy of Access. The second,

acbIsRuntime , returns True if
your application is running in the runtime version of Access or
False if it's in the retail
version. You may find these functions useful if your application
needs to react differently to different environments.

Public Function acbGetVersion( ) As String
' Retrieve the Access version for places
' that can't use symbolic constants.
acbGetVersion = SysCmd(acSysCmdAccessVer)
End Function
Public Function acbIsRuntime( ) As Boolean
' Use SysCmd( ) to gather the information.
acbIsRuntime = SysCmd(acSysCmdRuntime)
End Function