The great number users of Microsoft Access database find making a form simple enough. However, not many know that each form has property settings that you can change to control the look and behavior of a form. This tutorial will show you how to use the property sheet to manage a form’s properties. It will also explain some of the general property settings in an MS Access form.

First of all, form properties are a set of rules that governs very much everything about a form, from how it looks to the functions it performs. Pay attention that all Access database objects; forms, tables, reports have their own properties. Also every form control such as a label, a text box, a button in Access has its own set of features.

These properties are obtainable through the property sheet. To develop the property sheet of a form, double click the button at the top left corner of the form. The property sheet forms the properties into different categories.

Format category
Format properties control the view of a form. You can use these properties to control how it looks and what type of things you desire on a form. For example, you may choose to have things suh as scroll bars, record selectors or navigation buttons on the form. If you change the Navigation buttons property to No, the navigation buttons will be removed from the form.

Now, the property sheet contains a huge number of properties and it would be quite difficult for you to learn all of them. You may learn more about a property item by simply choosing the property and pressing F1.

On a usual help page, you should get a short explanation, syntax on how to use the property as part of an expression, certain remarks and some sample of the property being used.

Data properties
With these properties you may control things such as data source that the form binds to, whether or not you allow users to edit, add or delete existing data, what kind of things users can do with the data on the form. For instance, if you don’t want users to view data with this form and you only allow them to enter data, then you change the Data Entry property from No to Yes.

Event properties

Such properties are used to define a set of actions upon an event occurring like the opening of the form, data update by a user etc… You may define an action for each of these properties to carry out by clicking on the builder button with the 3 little dots. This will bring up the Choose Builder dialog enabling you define an action using the Expression Builder, Macro Builder or Code Builder if you’re familiar with Visual Basic for Application.
To get more information about Access VBA training you may by visiting Microsoft Access training courses and Access training London