FIX: Add Method of Forms Collection Fails in Executable (194912)

RESOLUTION

You can work around this problem by creating your own Forms collection. A reference to the form can be added to a collection, and keyed by the Form's name. This will let you load a form by specifying a text string and referencing the matching key field in the collection.

There are two options with this approach. You can pre-load the collection with a reference to all of the forms in the application at startup, which is the approach used in the following example. You may also load the forms into the collection as needed. There is slightly more programmatic overhead with the second approach, because you must check to see if the form is already in the collection. It is also important to note that adding the forms to the collection does not load the forms.

Steps to work around this problem are:

1. Start a new Standard EXE project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.
2. From the Project menu, add a second form to the project.
3. From the Project menu, add a standard module to the project.
4. Add the following code to the code window of Form1:

         Private Sub Form_Click()
            Dim strFormToLoad As String
            strFormToLoad = "Form2"
            loadForm (strFormToLoad)
         End Sub
   
         Private Sub Form_Load()
            colForms.Add Form2, "Form2"
         End Sub
   					

5. Add the following code to Module1:

         Public colForms As New Collection
   
         Public Sub loadForm(strFormName As String)
            Dim frm As Form
            Set frm = colForms(strFormName)
            frm.Show
   
         End Sub
   					

6. Run the project and click on Form1.
7. Form2 should be loaded.
8. Stop the project.
9. Choose Make Project1.exe from the File menu.
10. Run Project1.exe, and click on Form1.
11. Form2 should load successfully.