About themes
A theme is a set of unified design elements and color schemes for bullets, fonts, horizontal lines, background images, and other elements of a database object. Themes help you easily create professional and well-designed Microsoft Access applications.
Microsoft Office Access 2003 supports theming in two ways.
Inherits the theme from the operating system
If the operating system is Microsoft Windows XP SP 1 or later, and you have chosen a theme other than Windows Classic, Access will inherit the theme from the operating system. Most of the views, controls, and dialog boxes will be customized to match the Windows theme. Exceptions are reports, diagrams, SQL view of a query, and modules.
A control on a form will not inherit the Windows theme, if its property settings are different from what is listed below.
| Property | Setting |
|---|---|
| Special Effect | Sunken, Flat, or Etched. Note If the value is set to Flat, the Border Style property must not be set to Transparent in order to inherit the theme. |
| Border Style | Solid or Transparent. Note If the value is set to Transparent, the Special Effect property must not be set to Flat in order to inherit the theme. |
| Border Color | 0, -2147483640 (system color that corresponds to the default font color for dialogs) |
| Border Width | Hairline, 1, or 2 Note The Border Width is ignored for check boxes and option buttons. |
You can prevent form controls from inheriting the Windows theme by clearing the Use Windows Themed Controls on Forms check box on the Forms/Reports tab in the Options dialog box.
Note This setting applies only to the current database or project.
The check box is selected by default in databases created using Office Access 2003.
Provides special themes for data access pages
For data access pages, you can choose from a list of themes that are installed with Access when a page is opened in Design view.
When you apply a theme to a data access page, the following elements are customized: body and heading styles, background color or graphic, table border color, horizontal lines, bullets, hyperlink colors, and controls. You can also select options to apply brighter colors to text and graphics, animate certain theme graphics, and apply a background to your data access page.
You can apply a theme to a page that does not have a theme, change the current theme, or remove a theme. Before applying a theme, you can preview a sample page that uses the theme.
Theme graphics are animated only when you view the data access page in a Web browser, not while you view the data access page in Microsoft Access.
A variety of themes are available on your hard drive when you install Access. If you have Microsoft FrontPage 4.0 or later installed, you can use the FrontPage themes as well. Additional themes are available from the World Wide Web. To download these themes, click Microsoft Office Online on the Help menu.