Sizing text boxes and labels individually in 2007

[Paul E. Schoen]

I am new to Access 2007 but I have had considerable experience with 97 and
some with 2000 and 2002. I created a form (using a wizard) with multiple
labels and corresponding text boxes, and I want to adjust their sizes
individually. But in design view (and form view) the widths of all controls
in each column adjust together. I even tried to enter a width manually in
the property of a specific label or text box, and all of them adjust
together. I can go back and add text boxes one by one, but there are a lot
of them, and there should be a way to disconnect whatever links or anchors
are in place to align the sizes of these controls.

TIA for any help you can provide. Please let me know if there is a better
NG for this question.

Paul

 

[Paul E. Schoen]

I am new to Access 2007 but I have had considerable experience with 97 and
some with 2000 and 2002. I created a form (using a wizard) with multiple
labels and corresponding text boxes, and I want to adjust their sizes
individually. But in design view (and form view) the widths of all
controls in each column adjust together. I even tried to enter a width
manually in the property of a specific label or text box, and all of them
adjust together. I can go back and add text boxes one by one, but there
are a lot of them, and there should be a way to disconnect whatever links
or anchors are in place to align the sizes of these controls.

TIA for any help you can provide. Please let me know if there is a better
NG for this question.

I found out how to do this. Under form design tools there is a "Remove"
control which removes the columnar properties of a group of controls and
allows individual sizing, etc. It seems like this user interface layout is
rather confusing, although it is pretty. Just like Vista!

What do others think?

Paul

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

I found out how to do this. Under form design tools there is a "Remove"
control which removes the columnar properties of a group of controls and
allows individual sizing, etc. It seems like this user interface layout is
rather confusing, although it is pretty. Just like Vista!

What do others think?

This is one of my favorite new features in 2007. The resulting improvement
in
developer productivity absolute stunning. In fact I would go so far
as to say that this is the first real big true change in how we designed
forms and reports in access what, about its 17 year history?

For probably ten plus years or more access the report designer set the
standard in the whole computer industry as one of the BEST report writers
on the planet. However times change and other reporters in the industry were
becoming rather nice.

It was time for a change in the access report writer to improve how things
are done.

You ever have to work on fixing and building reports all day long? You ever
have to delete a column from the middle of a report?

You have to delete text box in the detail section.You then have to delete
the label in the heading section. You then have to move all the text boxes
in the detail section over to the left to fill in that hole. You then have
to move all the labels over in the heading part. And, the moving of the
controls have to be JUST right (usually a selection and then the arrow keys
to precisely move everything over to fill that gap). And now that we
deleted the one collum, then lets re-size a few of the other fields to fill
out that gap vacated. And furthermore the control layouts also allow you to
insert a new column into a report. So, adding, deleting, or resizing of
collums in a report just got a whole lot easier.

I don't know about you, but instead of doing all the huge amount of above
work, we now just delete the collum and we are done. What could be simpler
and less work? The same goes for resizing columns in that report. Resizing
collums was just such so much tedious work that you have to wonder how we
never complained all these years?

Here is a video of a person adding some columns to a report using those
control layouts.

Automatically align controls on a report
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/access/HA102374121033.aspx


It would be an understatement that this feature is nothing short of being
absolutely fabulous. This feature reduces the amount of effort and time to
modify reports more then any other feature ever added to access.
Furthermore, we can now modify reports WHILE we view data in the new report
layout mode. This means you don't have to flip back and forth hundreds of
times between print preview mode and design mode when doing those really
nice Final touches to a report. So the new layout mode removes the pain of
having to flip back and forth and then we throw in the new control layout
system and wow..do we have a winner or what?

I am hard pressed to think of any new feature in the last 3-5 versions of
access that improves the abiity of one to layout forms and reports remotely
close to the new control layout feature...

I think this new feature is nothing short of amazing....

 

[Paul E. Schoen]

I found out how to do this. Under form design tools there is a "Remove"
control which removes the columnar properties of a group of controls and
allows individual sizing, etc. It seems like this user interface layout
is
rather confusing, although it is pretty. Just like Vista!

What do others think?

This is one of my favorite new features in 2007. The resulting
improvement in
developer productivity absolute stunning. In fact I would go so far
as to say that this is the first real big true change in how we designed
forms and reports in access what, about its 17 year history?
[snip]

I am hard pressed to think of any new feature in the last 3-5 versions of
access that improves the abiity of one to layout forms and reports
remotely close to the new control layout feature...

I think this new feature is nothing short of amazing....

You have certainly presented a compelling case for this feature. It is
indeed a powerful and useful tool, once it is understood, as is the case
with most any tool. It was impossible to find out how to remove this
feature by using the help, and that was frustrating, which led me to find
this NG. Then after a few more minutes I stumbled on the "fix". I do not
use Access very often, but now I am building an application for someone and
they purchased the latest version, so I had to do the same. It was
certainly time to upgrade from 97, but I have been hesitant to convert my
previous MDB databases to the new ACCDB because there is no convenient way
to turn back.

I am still struggling with a few things that are probably difficult because
they need to use VB. I am more used to Borland Delphi Object Pascal and
various versions of C, so the idiosyncrasies of the language and my
unfamiliarity with the database objects makes it hard to do things
efficiently and correctly. Access is sure a long way from my earliest
experiences with dBase III and Nantucket Clipper.

I hope it is OK to ask some newbie questions here, even if they may not be
specifically related to forms? I'll struggle along for awhile and try to
learn, and then maybe ask for help again.

Thanks,

Paul

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

I am still struggling with a few things that are probably difficult
because they need to use VB. I am more used to Borland Delphi Object
Pascal and various versions of C, so the idiosyncrasies of the language
and my unfamiliarity with the database objects makes it hard to do things
efficiently and correctly. Access is sure a long way from my earliest
experiences with dBase III and Nantucket Clipper.

Yes, you having to learn the new version, a language that you not too up to
speed on...

Many of the regulars here are from those early days. I did a good stint with
FoxPro 2.0 in 1990...

I hope it is OK to ask some newbie questions here, even if they may not be
specifically related to forms? I'll struggle along for awhile and try to
learn, and then maybe ask for help again.

There are no dumb questions here. And, you obviously been exposed to these
silly computers for a long time.

One nice thing about access is the is an incredible and active user
community. It is so active, and the help available is really great....

 

[Paul E. Schoen]

Yes, you having to learn the new version, a language that you not too up
to speed on...

Many of the regulars here are from those early days. I did a good stint
with FoxPro 2.0 in 1990...


There are no dumb questions here. And, you obviously been exposed to
these silly computers for a long time.

One nice thing about access is the is an incredible and active user
community. It is so active, and the help available is really great....

It does seem very good. There is another good forum at
comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc. And for PADS PCB questions there is a
separate listserver.pads.com/talk. I'm also active on
rec.pets.dogs.behavior, sci.electronics.design, and sometimes others as the
needs change. For dogs, I also like www.victoriastilwell.com. There's
something for everyone, and the core communities are usually great. There
are also usually one or two crackpots

Paul