Tab order

[Guest]

I have a form in which data from our staff trainings is
entered. The main user of this database wants the form
to always open to the first record, and then if needed,
to manually go to a new record. No problem there. What
is a problem is the tab order. When she opens the form
the cursor is in the date field, but if she goes to a new
record, the cursor moves to the next field down instead
of staying in the date field. For ease of data entry,
the cursor really needs to be in the date field. Any
ideas?

Tara

 

[Dirk Goldgar]

I have a form in which data from our staff trainings is
entered. The main user of this database wants the form
to always open to the first record, and then if needed,
to manually go to a new record. No problem there. What
is a problem is the tab order. When she opens the form
the cursor is in the date field, but if she goes to a new
record, the cursor moves to the next field down instead
of staying in the date field. For ease of data entry,
the cursor really needs to be in the date field. Any
ideas?

Tara

I'm not sure why this is happening, but I can guess at a few
possibilities to check out:

1. Is the date field in the Form Header section, while this other field
is in the Detail section? Normally when you change from record to
record, the focus stays in the section where it was before you chanegd
records.

2. Is there code (or a macro) executed in either the form's Open event
or in the form's Current event that sets the focus to a particular
field -- either the date field or the other field? If so, there may be
a mismatch between the tab order defined for the form and what this code
says to do: either the date field is first in the tab order but code in
the Current event says to go to the other field, or the other field is
first in the tab order but code in the form's Open event says to go to
the date field. The mostly likely case is that you need to add or
change code in the form's Current event to set the focus to the date
field each time you go to a new record.

3. If the user has to click a button to go to a new record, the code
behind that button may be setting the focus to the improper field as
well as moving to a new record.