MS Access VBA - display dynamically built SQL results in datasheet subform

Question

I have several years experience with VBA in MS Office applications (for automation and ETL processes) but have not had the need to mess with Forms in MS Access until recentl

Answer 1

Some clarifying points for other readers:

A detail view subform's sourceObject property determines which columns/fields are displayed. So, you could set it to a table or query, then optionally use a filter to return no records (if you want the recordset to be initially blank) or as an alternative to using the recordSource for custom SQL.

The recordSource can be any table, query, or SQL, but the subform will only display fields with names matching the sourceObject's fields. This can be confusing if, for example, you set the sourceObject to a table, then the recordSource to a query with partially overlapping field names (Access will display all columns, but only the overlapping ones will have data in them).

To have a form which displays an arbitrary SELECT statement or allows the user to choose what table(s) to SELECT on, one could save their input as a new query (or have an existing named one to overwrite), then set the sourceObject to that (the form would have to be closed then re-opened for the new columns to be displayed, so you might want to open a pop-up or new tab to display the results).