make sure data is entered before going to new form?

[Denburt]

Your quite welcome Melissa and thanks Rabbit for taking up the slack nice job.

As a note I am a keyboard fanatic, I hate using the mouse unless it is needed. On my tab control I make sure the caption is in place and like most controls you simply place the & sysmbol before the letter or page number and your rolling with a keyboard shortcut. Page&1 etc.

[Rabbit]

That is so awesome.



Yes I did mean form, sorry about that. Fixed that too.



Thanks for that. I got the subform moved to another tab, now I have to figure out how to use the button to bring the other tab forward. Is it possible to lock a tab until a button is clicked? I think I will post this in a new thread though, in case it could help someone else.

Cheers Rabbit and all others that helped me with this!

:) melissa

Not a problem, good luck.

[NeoPa]

Thanks for that. I got the subform moved to another tab, now I have to figure out how to use the button to bring the other tab forward. Is it possible to lock a tab until a button is clicked? I think I will post this in a new thread though, in case it could help someone else.
:) melissa

Nice idea to put up a new thread Melissa.
Can you post a link in here to the new one - just for ease of finding it.

Cheers -Adrian.

PS. I too am impressed by the help that the boys have managed to offer. Well done Denburt & Rabbit :)

[AccessIdiot]

Your quite welcome Melissa and thanks Rabbit for taking up the slack nice job.

As a note I am a keyboard fanatic, I hate using the mouse unless it is needed. On my tab control I make sure the caption is in place and like most controls you simply place the & sysmbol before the letter or page number and your rolling with a keyboard shortcut. Page&1 etc.

I'm a keyboard fanatic too and I"ve noticed that you can tab through the controls on the form but they have to be in the same order as the fields in the table. That's kind of a bummer because I've arranged the fields in the tables to make the relationships diagram as clean as possible (I hate overlapping lines) but that doesn't correspond well with how I have set up my forms. Oh well.

Can you explain the keyboard shortcut a little more? (well, I supposed I could research it. :) ). If your tab control is called Page&1 what key do you hit on the keyboard to go to that tab? Is it just "1"?

thanks!

Oh and I will post a link to any new thread as soon as I create one. :)

[Rabbit]

I'm a keyboard fanatic too and I"ve noticed that you can tab through the controls on the form but they have to be in the same order as the fields in the table. That's kind of a bummer because I've arranged the fields in the tables to make the relationships diagram as clean as possible (I hate overlapping lines) but that doesn't correspond well with how I have set up my forms. Oh well.

Can you explain the keyboard shortcut a little more? (well, I supposed I could research it. :) ). If your tab control is called Page&1 what key do you hit on the keyboard to go to that tab? Is it just "1"?

thanks!

Oh and I will post a link to any new thread as soon as I create one. :)

If you right click the form and select tab order you can change how the tabbing flows.

When you use Page&1 as the caption, it shows up as Page1 which means that when the form is open in normal view, you can hit Alt+1 and it will jump to that tab. So with something like &Specimen, it will show up as Specimen and hitting Alt+s will jump to that tab.

[Denburt]

Rabbit is right about the tab order but the form has to be in design view to see this, also on each control there is a property that you can change, so you can change each control individually.
Another note you do want to take into consideration that there are menu's that have keyboard shortcuts etc. and you may want to avoid double dipping so to speak. Your users may not understand that if they hold the alt key then hit that repeated shortcut twice will usually get them where they want.

[NeoPa]

If you right click the form and select tab order you can change how the tabbing flows.

You can also rearrange the Tab Order of controls within a form by setting the Tab Index property explicitly. Watch out though, as every time you set it this way, it will automatically re-arrange the other controls to fill up the numbers from 0 to the number of controls -1. Easiest to manage the Tab order in the way Rabbit describes.

When you use Page&1 as the caption, it shows up as Page1 which means that when the form is open in normal view, you can hit Alt+1 and it will jump to that tab. So with something like &Specimen, it will show up as Specimen and hitting Alt+s will jump to that tab.

This is a fundamental concept that is used throughout Microsoft software. for instance, in Excel you can open the Edit menu simply by hitting Alt-e. When used fully this can be very powerful.

:Edit:
Denburt's post nipped in under mine and contains some more useful advice so please don't miss it because I posted over the top.

[AccessIdiot]

If you right click the form and select tab order you can change how the tabbing flows.

When you use Page&1 as the caption, it shows up as Page1 which means that when the form is open in normal view, you can hit Alt+1 and it will jump to that tab. So with something like &Specimen, it will show up as Specimen and hitting Alt+s will jump to that tab.

Brilliant, this will be very useful thanks.

Good advice from all (don't worry NeoPa, I read EVERYTHING, sometimes 2 and 3 times!) and while I would, in a heartbeat, implement keyboard shortcuts for myself I really need to "dumb it down" for the db users, the folks that will be entering in the data - either in the field themselves or in the office through their hired $8/hr techs (c'mon, we've all been there). So I need to fool proof this thing as much as I can in the time allowed. So I've figured out how to disable scrolling with the mouse wheel (which goes through records) and how to remove navigation controls etc but I need to figure out how to use a custom made button to go back and forth between the tabs. That thread is here

cheers :)

[AccessIdiot]

If you right click the form and select tab order you can change how the tabbing flows.

I can't believe I never found this. Bloody brilliant - thanks again.

[NeoPa]

Good advice from all (don't worry NeoPa, I read EVERYTHING, sometimes 2 and 3 times!)

I think you probably do Melissa :)
It's a good practice and well worth the trouble.
BTW Thanks for posting the link.