Microsoft Access 2010 Bible

Chapter 19: Advanced Access Form Techniques .........................................................................

681

FIGURE 19.2

The Property Sheet for the Customers form

Customizing default properties

Whenever you use a tool in the form Design view toolbox to create a control, the control is created

with a default set of property values. This may seem obvious, but what you may not know is that

you can set many of these default values yourself. For example, if you want all list boxes in your

form to be flat rather than sunken, it’s more efficient to change the default SpecialEffect

property to Flat before you design the form, instead of changing the SpecialEffect property

for every list box individually.

To set control defaults, select a tool in the toolbox and then set properties in the Property Sheet

without adding the control to the form. Notice that the title in the Property Sheet is Selection

type: Default <ControlType>. As you set the control’s properties, you’re actually setting the

default properties for that type of control for the current form. Instead of adding the control to the

form, select another control (such as the Select control in the upper-right corner of the Controls

group) to “lock down” the default settings. Then, when you reselect the control you want, you’ll

see that the control’s default properties have been set the way you wanted. When you save the

form, the property defaults you’ve set for the form’s controls are saved along with the form.

In addition to saving you time while designing a form, customizing default properties can speed

the saving and loading of forms. If most controls on the form use the default property settings, the

saved form takes less space, saves faster, and subsequently loads faster when your application uses

it (but doesn’t save memory).