About customizing a control

Microsoft Office Access 2003

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About customizing a control

In Design view of a form, report, or data access page, you can format a control in the following ways:

Size. You can resize a control by using the sizing handles, or you can resize a control to the height or width of another control. When you are in Design view of a form or report, you can use the ruler to help you resize controls. The width of the ruler's unit of measure is based on the regional settings in Microsoft Windows Control Panel.

Color, transparency, and special effects. You can change the color of a control or make it transparent. You can also emphasize the appearance of a control by using special effects. For example, you can specify that a control is raised, sunken, or etched. On a form or report, you can also specify that a control is shadowed or chiseled.

Borders. You can set the color and width of borders of controls. Also, you can set the line style of borders. For example, you can specify that a border consists of dashes or dots.

Appearance of text. You can specify the font and font size for text in a control. Also, you can make the text in a control bold, italic, or underlined.

Position. You can move a control or align it relative to another control. You can increase or decrease the space between controls, or you can specify that controls are evenly spaced.

About changing the properties of several controls at once

You can change property settings for a group of controls of the same type or for a group of controls of different types. If you select controls of different types, Microsoft Access displays only the properties that are shared by the group in the property sheet. If all the controls that you've selected share the same property setting, that setting appears in the property sheet; otherwise, that property box is blank. If you change the property setting, the change is applied to all selected controls.

Notes

  • To select several controls at once in a data access page, you must have Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or later installed on your computer.
  • In a form or report, the Name property never appears when more than one control is selected because control names must be unique.