Tab Order

[Lyn]

Hi, I am a newbie to this group and to Access. I am working on developing a
form and am having trouble with the Tab Order dialog (View -> Tab Order...).
I am using Access 2003 under Win XP.

My form has approx 30 controls, mostly text boxes, and I am trying to get
the tab order into a logical sequence. The problems are:-

a) The "Custom Order" list in the dialog still includes a number of unbound
objects which are obsolete (they were deleted from the form ages ago).

b) Recently added bound controls do not appear in the list at all, so I
cannot set them into the tab order.

According to the Help, this list is maintained automatically as controls are
added to or deleted from the form. The Tab order dialog allows only to
"AutoOrder" the tab order (basically across the page starting at the top and
working downwards) or to order manually. But the latter only works with
objects in the list, and the list is out of date. It almost seems as if the
list stopped being updated at some point.

What have I done wrong?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Lyn.

PS:::: I recently added a Tab Control across the bottom half of the form,
then moved some controls from the main Detail section to the first (of six)
pages in the Tab Control section. The other five pages are still blank. I
don't know if this is significant to the problem.

 

[Wayne Morgan]

I don't know why the dialog would be show old items unless they are still
there and you just can't see them. Open the form in design mode, open the
Properties dialog, then go to the drop down on the Properties dialog. Are
the extra items in the Tab Order dialog also listed in this drop down?

Another way to change the tab order is the Other tab on the Properties
dialog box. If you insert a tab order number that is already in use, that
item already using that number and all the follow it will be automatically
moved down to allow the insertion.

 

[Lyn]

Pls disregard. Just writing up this post has made me go back and rethink
what I was doing. The "obsolete" controls were in fact the "missing"
controls. Somehow, I had forgotten to rename them from the defaults are
binding them to their corresponding DB objects.

Silly me!

 

[Lyn]

Wayne,
Thanks for your prompt response. As I indicated in another post, just
documenting my problem after many hours of head-scratching was enough to
stimulate the right neurons so that I could solve it.

However, I was not aware of the Tab Index field in the Other tab of
Properties. This looks like a very useful alternative to the Tab Order
dialog. Thanks again for your help!