Many Access Users fail to realize that it has a built-in Progress Meter that can display the relative completion percentage of various processes. It is fairly limited, but nonetheless, does provide visual feedback indicating the percent completion of a certain task. The Meter itself, when activated, rests on the left hand corner of the Status Bar and is controlled via the SysCmd() Method. It is straightforward, simple to use, and involves only 3 steps to implement it, These steps are listed below. Following these steps, a code segment involving the updating of a Field within a Recordset, will demonstrate its use.

1. Initiate the Meter using the acSysCmdInitMeter Action Argument, descriptive text, and a Value Argument which is the Maximum Value of the Meter.
2. Periodically update the Meter with the acSysCmdUpdateMeter Action Argument and a Value Argument indicating the relative progress of the task at hand.
3. Remove the Meter using the acSysCmdClearStatus.

1. 'The following code will loop through all Records in tblEmployee
2. and Update the value in a newly created Field called [Full Name]
3. to [FirstName] & " " & [LastName]. The relative completion percentage
4. of this operation will be displayed in our Progress Meter.
5. Dim MyDB As DAO.Database, MyRS As DAO.Recordset
6. Dim varReturn, intCounter As Long, dblNum, intNoOfRecs As Long
7. Set MyDB = CurrentDb()
8. Set MyRS = MyDB.OpenRecordset("tblEmployee", dbOpenDynaset)
9. MyRS.MoveLast: MyRS.MoveFirst
10. intNoOfRecs = MyRS.RecordCount
11. 'Initialize the Progress Meter, set Maximum Value = intNoOfRecs
12. varReturn = SysCmd(acSysCmdInitMeter, "Updating...", intNoOfRecs)
13. Do While Not MyRS.EOF
14.   With MyRS
15.     .Edit
16.       ![Full Name] = ![FirstName] & " " & ![LastName]
17.         intCounter = intCounter + 1
18.         'Update the Progress Meter to (intCounter/intNoOfRecs)%
19.         varReturn = SysCmd(acSysCmdUpdateMeter, intCounter)    .Update
20.         .MoveNext
21.   End With
22. Loop
23. 'Remove the Progress Meter
24. varReturn = SysCmd(acSysCmdClearStatus)
25. MyRS.Close

Source: thescripts.com