Access Cookbook, 2nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Recipe 2.1 Make Custom Templates for Forms and Reports

2.1.1 Problem

When you make a new blank
form, the form properties and the properties of any control placed on
it use the Access defaults. You've decided upon a
standard look for your forms and reports that is significantly
different from these defaults, and you spend too much time changing
control properties on every new form you create to make them match
your look. You'd like some way to change the
standard default values.

2.1.2 Solution

Access allows you to specify a particular form or report to use as a
template for new forms or reports that you create. This solution
lists the steps you'll need to take to create your
own template for form design. The technique is the same for form
templates and report templates.

To see the advantages of using a template to define a new
form's settings, load

02-01.MDB
and create a new form. Add controls of various types to the form.
Notice that some of them look different from the normal Access
defaults. To see where the properties are coming from, load the form
named Normal from

02-01.MDB in design mode. Each
of the controls on this form will act as a template for any new
controls on any forms you create in this database. In addition, any
new form you create will inherit its own properties from this
template form.

To create your own template form, follow these steps:

1. Create a new blank form.

2. Make any general changes you want in the
   form properties, such as changing the GridX and GridY properties to
   different settingsmany users may prefer 24 24, the smallest
   grid that will show dots. To do this, first display the properties
   sheet: click on the gray in the upper-left corner of the form or
   select the Edit Select Form menu item. If you
   don't want a record selector, navigation buttons,
   minimize or maximize buttons, a control box, and/or scrollbars on
   your form template, turn them off in the layout section of the
   form's properties sheet. In addition, you can choose
   to center the form automatically when it is opened by changing the
   AutoCenter property to Yes.

3. You may also wish to change the
   form's background color by changing the background
   color for the form's detail section (click on the
   detail section bar in form design to select the section). If you want
   your forms to have page headers/footers or form headers/footers,
   activate them by checking Format Page Header/Footer or
   Form Header/Footer and set their colors as well.

4. Once you have finished setting up the form's general
   properties, repeat the process to change the default settings for
   each control you want to modify. There are two ways you can do this:

   • Click on the tool for that control in the toolbox and change the
     properties in the control's properties sheet. Note
     that when you do this, the properties sheet's
     titlebar says Default Label (or whatever control you have selected),
     as shown in Figure 2-1.

   • Change the controls directly on your form. Add to your form each
     control type you want to change, and set the properties visibly. Once
     you're done, select the Format Set
     Control Defaults menu item, with all the controls selected.

Figure 2-1. The Default Label properties sheet

5. Save your form with any name you like.

6. Finally, open the Tools Options Forms/Reports
   dialog, as shown in Figure 2-2. (The dialog box may
   appear differently in your version of Access.) Enter your
   form's name in the Form Template text box.

Figure 2-2. The Form/Report tab of the Options dialog

2.1.3 Discussion

Access normally uses a hidden form
named Normal for its form template (and a report of the same name for
its report template). If you don't specify your own
default properties, all your new forms will use
Access's built-in form, report, and control
properties. If you create a form named Normal and set the default
control and form properties for that form, Access will use that form
as a template (that's how the example database has
been configured). If you name your form something other than Normal,
you can instruct Access to use that form as the template by changing
the Form template value in the Tools Options dialog.

You may want to use different
background colors for labels attached to text boxes or combo boxes or
for unattached labels, but Access won't let you save
specific settings for different types of labels. There is just one
type of label, as far as Access is concerned. The default label has
one background color, and you must change it as needed depending on
its attachment.

To make a report template, follow
the same procedure as for a form template (you can omit controls that
aren't useful on reports, such as combo boxes and
command buttons).

A
form or report template only supplies styles (such as color, presence
of headers and/or footers, and grid granularity) to new forms; it
doesn't supply the controls themselves. If you would
like all your forms to contain standard controls at fixed locations,
you'll need to make a copy of a standard form and
work from that copy. If you copy the entire form, any code attached
to the control's event procedures (in the
form's module) will also be
copiedthat's not true if you use templates to
create your new forms and reports.

The template form (or report) affects only

new objects. If you create a form based on the
template and then change the template, any previously created forms
based on that template will not be affected.

You can maintain several form or report templates in your database.
If you want a specific template for dialog forms and a different one
for data-entry forms, keep them both in the database and change the
option when you want to create a new form based on a specific
template.

2.1.4 See Also

See How Do I Set Control Properties? in the Preface for more basic
information on control properties.