Idle Detect/Inactivity Timeout

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(Created 2010-09-03)

Exiting the user after 30 or 60 minutes of inactivity is, in my opinion, a good thing.  If you are using a Microsoft Access database file to store your data then you know you can get into the backend to make schema changes.   Also you will know that the nightly backup will proceed relatively cleanly.   And basically just to ensure that if anything "interesting" happens over night that the user is out of the application. 

Start with the code at How to detect User Idle Time or Inactivity in Access 2000

However we found that the code which runs on the timer event must be disabled for the programmers. Otherwise weird things start happening when you're editing code. If you distribute your Access database front end (FE) file as a MDE/ADE/ACCDE you can use the IsMDE function to turn on the timer event.

Public Function IsMDE() As Boolean Dim db As DAO.Database On Error GoTo tagError     Set db = CurrentDb     If db.Properties("MDE") = "T" Then         IsMDE = True     End If tagNoProperty:     db.Close: Set db = Nothing     On Error GoTo 0    Exit Function tagError:     Select Case Err.Number     Case 3270 ' Property not found         IsMDE = False         Resume tagNoProperty     Case Else         MsgBox "Error " & Err.Number & " (" & Err.Description & ") in procedure IsMDE of Module mdltt_FixReferences"     End Select End Function

Also print preview would sometimes not allow the users to run a menu item to export the report to Excel or others. So you had to right click on the Previewed report to set the focus back on the report so they could then export it. This was also helped by extending the timer to five minutes.

The downside to extending the timer to five minutes was if a person stays in the same form and at the same control for considerable parts of the day, ie someone doing the same inquiries, the routine didn't realize that they had actually done something. I'd be putting in some logic sometime to reset this timer whenever they do something in the program.

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