SDA said:
Does anyone know of a way to kill autoformatting in Access 2007 form
design? It does stupid formatting most of the time and my wrist is
getting tired.
the way form design works in 2007 is not really any different then say going
back 5 versions to access 97.
However, if you built the form with a wizard, then you have control layouts.
Perhaps you talking about control layouts? Click anywhere on a form text box
(when in design mode).
You will then see a "+" appear in the upper left. click on that, and then
all controls will highlight.
Now, click on the "arrange" tab, and you see Tabular, Stacked, Remove.
You want to click on "remove" to remove the grouping. Once done, then all
controls can be sized and moved independent of each other.
While sometimes as in your case you don't want the controls grouped, it one
of my favorite new features in ms-access.
How Add/remove controls from a layout:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/access/HA102765511033.aspx
While for forms the feature not that helpful (except when creating a row of
buttons that are grouped together and thus look much like a menu bar), This
new way of dropping controls on a form is nice. For reports this represents
the BEST new change for reports design in access for the last 17 years.
If you ever spent a day modifying or changing or adding or removing columns
to existing reports, then this is the feature for you. You can re-size one
column, delete a column, or insert new columns into a report and everything
moves over (or fills the hole) when you delete. This feature will save MORE
time then any other feature change I can think of in access. the old way was
downright SILLY and I can remember saying for years that access needs some
serious help here. In the old way to delete a column you first delete the
control in the detail section. You have to CAREFULLY select all controls to
the right, and THEN CAREFUL move all the controls over to fill the hole. You
then have to select the label in the reports page heading, and delete it.
You then have to select all headings to the right, and move them over. And,
this whole process is even WORSE when you try to re-size a column in a
report. with the new layout control system, it one delete key to remove a
column, and re-size the column and everything moves over. And, even better
is you can do this in preview mode WHILE you see data. In other words, not
only is this a 100 times easier then before, but you can do this without
having to flip 100's of times back and forth from design mode to report
preview mode. So, throw in the control layout system + the new design in
preview mode once again raises the bar in ms-access having a fantastic
report writer. It needed a working over as mentioned the above process to
re-size, add, or remove a column was downright stone age in this day and
age....
Now, it possible you not taking about control layouts at all, but default
colors/fronts etc.?
This feature been improved also. You can take one of your existing forms and
SAVE THAT as the template for your whole application defaults. Simply go:
office button->access options->object designers->scroll down to the
form/reports section, and you see the option to specify an existing form for
the application layout when you create, or drop in controls on forms.
When you get the hang of the above several additional features in 2007...you
really miss this stuff when you have to work in a previous versions...
And it is possible that your issues are neither of the above issues...but
the above is still a great list of features to know in 2007 anway.
