Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Part I: Access Building Blocks

314

Each control has two properties related to the Tab Order dialog box. The Tab Stop property

determines whether pressing the Tab key lands you on the control. The default is Yes. Changing

the Tab Stop property to No removes the control from the tab order. When you set the tab order,

you’re setting the Tab Index property values. Moving the fields around in the Tab Order dialog

box changes the Tab Index properties of those (and other) controls.

Aligning controls

You may want to move several controls so that they’re all aligned (lined up). With multiple controls

selected, the Layout ribbon’s Control Alignment group has several options for aligning controls:

Left, Right, Top, and Bottom. These commands work the same as the Control Alignment com-

mands described in Chapter 7, with the exception of aligning controls to the grid, which is not

available in Layout view.

Modifying the format of text in a control

To modify the formatting of text within a control, select the control by clicking it, and then select a

formatting style to apply to the control. The Layout view ribbon’s Design tab (shown in Figure

8.14) contains additional commands for changing the format of a control.

FIGURE 8.14

The Form ribbon’s Format tab

To change the fonts for the Category control, make sure you’re in Layout view, and then follow

these steps:

1. Select the Category text box control by clicking on it.


2. Change the Font Size to 14, and then click on the Bold button in the Format tab’s Font
   group.

The control does not automatically resize when changing its font properties. If you see
only a portion of the text box, the control may require resizing to display all the text.

Using the Field List to add controls

The form’s Field List displays a list of fields from the table or query on which the form is based.

Use the Add Existing Fields button on the Design tab to open it if the Field List is not currently