Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 8: Working with Data on Access Forms

313

Setting the Tab Order

You may notice that when you use the Tab key to move from control to control, the cursor jumps

around the screen. The route taken by the Tab key may seem strange, but that’s the original order

in which the controls were added to the form.

The tab order of the form is the order in which the focus moves from control to control as you

press Tab. The form’s default tab order is always the order in which the controls were added to the

form. Moving controls around on the form means you’ll need to change the form’s tab order. Even

though you may make heavy use of the mouse when designing your forms, most data-entry people

use the keyboard, rather than the mouse, to move from control to control.

Select Tab Order from the Design tab’s Tools group to display the Tab Order dialog box, shown in

Figure 8.13. This dialog box shows the controls in the form arranged in the current tab order.

Controls such as labels, lines, and other non-data controls don’t appear in the Tab Order dialog

box.

FIGURE 8.13

The Tab Order dialog box

The Tab Order dialog box lets you select either one or more rows at a time. Multiple contiguous

rows are selected by clicking the first control and dragging to select multiple rows. After highlight-

ing rows, the selected rows can be dragged to their new positions in the tab order.

The Tab Order dialog box has several buttons at the bottom. Auto Order places the controls in

order from left to right and from top to bottom, according to their position in the form. This but-

ton is a good starting place when the tab order is very disorganized. The OK button applies the

changes to the form, while the Cancel button closes the dialog box without changing the tab order.