Shrinking forms

[Scott]

I have inherited a database where I work that has been functioning as it was
supposed to for quite some time until just recently. The form that opens on
startup has "mysteriously" shrunk such that when the form opens all a user
can see is the blinking text cursor and white space enough for one character.
I was able to fix it easily enough by opening the form in Design View and
resizing it. This hapened twice now with the starup form and at least once
with another form over the past week. Ther forms can only be resized in
design view and I can safely rule out the possibility of somebody else
opening the forms in design view. Does anybody have an idea as to what might
be causing the changes? Thank you for your help.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

Actually you don't have to go into design mode to save its new position, or
its new size at all.

In fact as a general rule, I size the form in view mode, and then control-s
to save that forms size. So, going into design mode is not a requirement to
set the forms size.

Here's what I would do:

when the form is in design mode, check settings in the forms property sheet
, specifically

auto re-size - no
auto center = yes

After you change the above settings, save the form. Now, open up the form in
view mode, size it exactly the way you want, and then hit ctrl-s

Now, flip the form into design mode, and change the border style from
"sizable" to "thin"....and save again. This should pretty well lock up your
form into a particular size, and prevent users from changing it by accident,
or on purpose.

In fact while we're at this, if you have more than one user using this
application, you should be distributing an mde to the end users, and also
split the database. if you do this, then they're completely locked out of
design in changes to your application.

I explain the concept of splitting here:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Articles/split/index.htm

 

[Scott]

The solution you described is already in place. That is why I am at a loss
for the cause. The startup form I mentioned does have thin borders and
resize is set to NO. Form view mode is the default and every other view type
(ex. layout) is set to no.

Possibly of interest: The database was created in access 2003 and we have
upgraded to 2007. Is it possible (because the two handle enabling security
differently) that somebody interrupting the auto-exec macro (by clicking
"disable all macros") would cause some change to be affected?

By the way - Thanks for the bit about mde distribution and splitting the
database. That is something I want to do soon.