Microsoft Access Programmer Peoria, Illinois

Working With Microsoft Access Fields And Objects

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

Adding Fields to the Form

You can easily add fields to a form by using the Field List window, which contains all the fields that are part of the form's record source. The record source for the form is the table, query, or embedded SQL statement that underlies the form. For example, in Figure 5.10, the form's record source is qryClients. The fields listed in the Field List pane are the fields that are part of the query. To add fields to a form, use these two steps:

1. Make sure the Field List window is visible. If it isn't, click the Add Existing Fields button on the ribbon.

2. Locate the field you want to add to the form; then click and drag the field from the field list to the place on the form where you want it to appear. The location you select becomes the upper-left corner of the text box, and the attached label appears to the left of where you dropped the control.

Selecting, Moving, Aligning, and Sizing Form Objects

You must know several important tricks of the trade when selecting, moving, aligning, and sizing form objects. These tips will save you hours of frustration and wasted time.

Selecting Form Objects

The easiest way to select a single object on a form is to click it. After you have selected the object, you can move it, size it, or change any of its properties. Selecting multiple objects is a bit trickier, but you can do it in several ways. Different methods are more efficient in different situations. To select multiple objects, you can hold down the Shift key and click each object you want to select. Each selected object is surrounded by selection handles, indicating that it has been selected.

Figure 5.11 shows a form with four selected objects; it's important to understand which objects are actually selected. The ClientID text box, Company Name label and text box, and Contact First Name label are all selected; however, the Client ID label, ContactFirstName, and Contract Last Name label and associated text box aren't selected. If you look closely at the figure, you can see that the selected objects are completely surrounded by selection handles. The Client ID label and ContactFirstName text box each has just a single selection handle because each is attached to objects that are selected. If you change any properties of the selected objects, the Client ID label and ContactFirstName text box will be unaffected.

You can also select objects by lassoing them. Objects to be lassoed must be located adjacent to one another on the form. Place your mouse pointer on a blank area of the form (not over any objects) and then click and drag your mouse pointer. You can see a thin line around the objects your mouse pointer is encircling. When you let go, any objects that were within the lasso, including those only partially surrounded, are selected. If you want to deselect any of these objects to exclude them, hold down your Shift key and click the object(s) you want to deselect.

One of my favorite ways to select multiple objects is to use the horizontal and vertical rulers that appear at the edges of the Form Design window. Click and drag within the ruler. Notice that as you click and drag on the vertical ruler, two horizontal lines appear, indicating which objects are selected. As you click and drag across the horizontal ruler, two vertical lines appear, indicating the selection area. When you let go of your mouse, any objects within the lines are selected. As with the process of lassoing, to remove any objects from the selection, hold down your Shift key and click on the object(s) you want to deselect.

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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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Expert Microsoft Access Progammer Peoria, IL

When you need a Microsoft Access programmer for your Peoria, Illinois business, call MS Access Solutions at (323) 285-0939. We have over 25 years experience in Microsoft Access programmer solutions.

We build Microsoft Access databases for businesses of all types, including hospitals, city and state agencies, branches of the military, colleges, farms, employment services, oil and gas companies, andinsurance firms. These aren't cookie-cutter solutions. Every setup is different, because every operation has its own quirks. We design each Access application to match how you actually use data, not how someone thinks you should use it.

Some projects are large multi-user systems connected to SQL Server and use custom-built forms. We also take care of the smaller projects for broken forms, reports that won't print right, queries that don't return what they should, macros that used to work but don't anymore. We fix those problems so you can get back to work without fighting your tools.

Most people come to us because something's not working, or because what they're using now is just too clunky. We ask questions about how your team works, what information you need to track, and what's getting lost or missed. Then we build or fix what's needed. That might mean redesigning your tables to cut down on duplicate entries, building smarter forms that guide users through the right steps, or adding tools to generate reports that actually make sense to the people reading them.

If your database connects to SQL Server, we know how to keep things running smoothly. Access is still be a great front end, especially for staff who are already comfortable with it. We've worked with setups where Access handles the interface and SQL Server does the heavy lifting behind the scenes. It's a solid way to scale up without replacing everything.

We also do cleanup work. Slow database? Weird errors? Strange behavior after a Windows update? We'll go through your queries, your code, your objects, whatever's causing the problem and make it right. Sometimes that means fixing something that's been patched too many times. Other times it's about simplifying a system that is too complex.

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