Changing the Look of Forms 829
Changing the Look of Forms.
When you create a form by using the Form tool, as you did in the previous exercise, the
form includes every field in the table on which it is based. Each field is represented on
the form by a text box control and its associated label control. The form is linked, or
bound, to the table, and each text box is bound to its corresponding field. The table is
called the record source, and the field is called the control source.
Forms and their controls have properties that determine how they behave and look.
A form inherits some of its properties from the table on which it is based. For example,
each text box name on the form reflects the corresponding field name in the source
table. The text box label also reflects the field name, unless the field has been assigned
a Caption property, in which case it reflects the caption. The width of each text box is
determined by the Field Size property in the table.
Even though a form is bound to its table, the properties of the form are not bound to
the table’s properties. After you have created the form, you can change the properties
of the form’s fields independently of those in the table. You might want to change these
properties to improve the form’s appearance—for example, you can change the font,
font size, alignment, fill color, and border.
One of the quickest ways to change the look of a form is to change the theme applied
to the database. A theme is a combination of colors and fonts that controls the look of
certain objects. In the case of a form, it controls the color and text of the header at the
top of the form and the text of the labels and text boxes. By default, the Office theme is
applied to all databases based on the Blank Database template and their objects, but
you can easily change the theme by clicking the Themes button in the Themes group
on the Design contextual tab, and then making a selection from the Themes gallery.
While the gallery is displayed, you can point to a theme to display a live preview of
how the active database object will look with that theme’s colors and fonts applied.
If you like the colors of one theme and the fonts of another, you can mix and match
theme elements. First apply the theme that most closely resembles the look you want,
and then in the Themes group, change the colors by clicking the Colors button or the
fonts by clicking the Fonts button.
Tip If you create a combination of colors and fonts that you would like to be able to use with
other databases, you can save the combination as a new theme by clicking Save Current Theme
at the bottom of the Themes gallery.