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Microsoft Access Objects - Tips For Programmers

This technical information comes directly from our owner and principal programmer, Alison Balter. We don't expect you to become an expert in Microsoft Access - this material is presented so you can see for yourself the expertise and technical Microsoft Access programming skills we offer all our clients. When you need any Microsoft Access prgrammer services, contact MS Access Solutions at (323)285-0939 for rapid response and expert Access programming.

The material below originally appeared in Alison Balter's book Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2007 Development and is reprinted with the author's permission. There may be references to "Figures" or "Chapters"that are not reprintable and are not used on this page.

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Microsoft Access - Selecting Report Objects

To select a single report object, click it; selection handles appear around the selected object. After you select the object, you can modify any of its attributes (properties), or you can size, move, or align it.

To select multiple objects so that you can manipulate them as a unit, use one of the following techniques:

• Hold down the Shift key as you click multiple objects. Each object you click is then added to the selection.


• Place your mouse pointer in a blank area of the report. Click and drag to lasso the objects you want to select. When you let go of the mouse, any object even partially within the lasso is selected.


• Click and drag within the horizontal or vertical ruler. As you click and drag, lines appear indicating the potential selection area. When you release the mouse, all objects within the lines are selected.

Make sure you understand which objects are actually selected; attached labels can cause some confusion. Figure 6.12 shows a report with four objects selected: the Client ID and Intro Date labels and the CompanyName and DefaultRate text boxes. The Company Name and Default Rate labels and the ClientID and IntroDate text boxes are not selected. If you were to modify the properties of the selected objects, those controls would be unaffected.

Moving Objects Around In MS Access

If you want to move a single control along with its attached label, click the object and drag it to a new location. The object and the attached label move as a unit. To move multiple objects, use one of the methods explained in the preceding section to select the objects you want to move. After you select the objects, click and drag any of them; the selected objects and their attached labels move as a unit.

Moving an object without its attached label is a trickier process. When placed over the center or border of a selected object (not on a sizing handle), the mouse pointer looks like a hand with all five fingers pointing upward. This indicates that the selected object and its attached label move as a unit, maintaining their relationship to one another. However, if you place your mouse pointer directly over the selection handle in the object's upperleft corner, the mouse pointer looks like a cross-bar. This indicates that the object and the attached label move independently of one another so that you can alter the distance between them.

Aligning Objects with One Another

To align objects with one another, you must select them first. Click the Arrange tab. Then select the appropriate button in the Control Alignment group. The selected objects will align in relation to each other.

Aligning Report Objeccts

Watch out for a few "gotchas" when you're aligning report objects: If you select several text boxes and their attached labels and align them, Access tries to align the left sides of the text boxes with the left sides of the labels. To avoid this problem, you have to align the text boxes separately from their attached labels.

During the alignment process, Access never overlaps objects. For this reason, if the objects you're aligning don't fit, Access can't align them. For example, if you try to align the bottom of several objects horizontally and they don't fit across the report, Access aligns only the objects that fit on the line.

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Author Attribution

The preceding material originally appeared in Alison Balter's book Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2007 Development and is reprinted here with the author's permission.

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When you need a Microsoft Access programmer for your New York, New York business or organization, call MS Access Solutions at (323)285-0939. We have over 25 years (now almost 30 years) of experience prggramming Microsoft Access database applications. We create Microsoft Access database applications for all industries, including but not limited to medical clinics, hospitals, oil and gas companies, government agencies at the local, state, and federal level, the U.S. military, school districts, junior colleges, universities, agriculture and horticulture, human resources departments and emplyoment services companies, and insurance agencies and insurance companies.

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