I'm working on a form that we can use in our bakery to view and edit the customer information.
And I know the employees are going to be using this form a lot,
so I want to make it as pleasant and easy to use as possible.
To do that, I'm going to need to make some adjustments to the layout and formatting.
The first thing I'm going to do is add a Command Button
that the user can click to search for a specific record.
To add a command button, you'll need to be in
Layout view.
In the Design tab, find the Controls group,
click on the drop-down arrow,
and make sure that Use Control Wizards is selected.
And then select the Button command.
Then, in the Form, click where you want the button
to go.
There are many different actions that you can
choose from,
and they're organized under different categories.
Most of the time, you're probably just going to
use actions from the first four categories.
The one that I want is in Record Navigation, and
it's called Find Record.
Then click Next.
Here, you can choose whether you want the button
to display text or a picture.
In this case, I'm going to use the default binoculars picture,
but you could also browse for another picture if you want.
In the last step, you can type a name for the
button.
I'll call it Search.
And this text will not appear on the button,
but it may be helpful if you need to edit the
button later with the Property Sheet.
Click Finish, and your button will appear on the
form.
At this point, I want to move and resize the fields
so that we can get a better view of everything.
I think everything would fit a lot better if I put
it into two columns.
You can adjust the fields just like you would in a
report.
For example, you can click on a cell and then drag
the edge to resize the column.
Next, I'm going to go to the Arrange tab,
and then in the Rows & Columns group, select Insert Right to add a column.
I'm going to click it twice so we have one column
for the field labels
and another for the actual fields.
Then I'll just click and drag the fields where I
want them.
You may end up with some empty rows,
and you can just click on them and press the Delete key to get rid of them.
And I'd like the Other Notes field to be larger,
so I'm going to merge it with the other cells in
its row.
I'll hold down the shift key while I'm clicking on
each cell,
and then on the Arrange tab, I'll click the Merge command.
Finally, I'm going to make some adjustments to the
colors and fonts,
just to make it look a little nicer.
And again, this is exactly like formatting a
report.
You can go to the Design tab to add a logo or
choose a theme.
But keep in mind, the theme applies to your entire
database,
so if you want to make changes that will only apply to this form,
you can use the commands in the Format tab.
Here, you can adjust the colors and fonts of
individual elements in the form.
I'm going to control-click the fields that I want
to change,
and now I can adjust the fill color, outline color, and outline weight.
I'm also going to choose a background color and
add a few final touches.
Okay, my form is now finished.
I've added the logo for our bakery, I've added a
shadow to the Search box from the
Shape Effects menu, and I've also changed the
font of the form header.
It may take some time to get the form exactly how
you want it,
but once you do, you'll have a professional-looking form
that's easy for people to use.