Forum Discussion
How to Dynamically Control Debug.Print in MS Access VBA for Optimized Performance
Hello Microsoft Community,
I’m Sasha Froyland, and I run an MS Access consultancy where we focus on optimizing performance while maintaining flexibility in debugging. I’ve recently developed a strategy for dynamically controlling Debug.Print to gain up to a 30% performance boost, which we use in our projects. What follows is this performance best practice that has helped us improve efficiency.
Would a post like this be of interest to the community? If this isn't the appropriate place for such content, please accept my apologies in advance. My only goal is to facilitate communication and knowledge-sharing of best practices across the Access development space.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Below, please find the details of the best practice:
At Help4Access, we know how important it is to balance performance with debugging. MS Access developers rely on Debug.Print to track their code, but excessive use can slow your application—sometimes by as much as 30%. To solve this, we’ve designed a dynamic method to enable or disable Debug.Print, giving you a performance boost without sacrificing debugging flexibility.
Step 1: Global Variable for Control
Start by adding a global variable:
This will allow you to toggle Debug.Print on and off globally in your app.
Step 2: Configuration Table
Create a system configuration table, tblSystemConfig, with a field DebugEnabled (Yes/No). This table will store the setting for whether Debug.Print is active.
Step 3: Initialize on Startup
At the start of your application, pull the DebugEnabled value into the global variable:
Step 4: Conditional Debug.Print
Wherever you use Debug.Print, wrap it in a conditional statement:
Step 5: Real-Time Debugging Control
You can toggle the DebugEnabled flag in your config table to turn debugging on or off, and then refresh gDebugEnabled—no need to restart the application. This gives you up to a 30% performance boost during production while retaining the ability to debug when necessary.
By following this approach, you get both better debugging and improved performance. At Help4Access, we implement strategies like this to ensure that your Access applications run faster and more efficiently.
