Progress bar in MS Access

I have a query running in Microsoft Access 2010 and it takes over 30 minutes to run normally. I would like to present the end user with some status of the query. A progress bar would be nice but not required. Access seems to be poorly threaded and locks up tight during the execution of the query, negating any updates I try. While I'd rather whip out VS and write my own app to do this, I'm forced to use Access.

I used to run this from a batch script which populated the database but I'd like to have it all self-contained in Access. To be specific, the "query" is really a VBA script that pings a series of hosts. So I'm not too concerned about optimizing the time per se but simply about letting the end user know it hasn't locked up.

Solution

I often do something like this

Dim n As Long, db As DAO.Database, rs As DAO.Recordset

'Show the hour glass
DoCmd.Hourglass True

Set db = CurrentDb
Set rs = db.OpenRecordset("SELECT ...")

rs.MoveLast 'Needed to get the accurate number of records

'Show the progress bar
SysCmd acSysCmdInitMeter, "working...", rs.RecordCount

rs.MoveFirst
Do Until rs.EOF
    'Do the work here ...

    'Update the progress bar
    n = n + 1
    SysCmd acSysCmdUpdateMeter, n

    'Keep the application responding (optional)
    DoEvents

    rs.MoveNext
Loop
rs.Close: Set rs = Nothing
db.Close: Set db = Nothing

'Remove the progress bar
SysCmd acSysCmdRemoveMeter

'Show the normal cursor again
DoCmd.Hourglass False

Note: Of course you must do the work programmatically for this to work. You cannot watch a runnging query in code or the like in Access. Possibly you could split the work of your slow query into smaller pieces, in order to get the chance of updating a progress bar. But you can always show the hour glass; this tells the user that something is happening.