Creating Forms is tedious

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Marshall, MVP
  • Start date Start date
J

John Marshall, MVP

I need to create about 60 to 70 forms in Access 2003 and I am finding that
it is still as hard to do as it was in Access 2.

I need something more refined than the wizard created forms. The wizards
assign as much space to a single character field as it does to a sixty
character field.

I find creating forms on a mainframe a lot easier because I am restricted to
24 rows of eighty columns. With Access 2003 I waste a lot of time moving
fields around because they CAN be moved in increments of thousands of an
inch.

So what am I missing? Are there any features or techniques within Access
2003 to make this task less tedious?

John... Visio MVP
 
There aren't a great many shortcuts to writing Forms if you
can't/aren't prepared to accept or adapt the ones the wizard produces.
You have probably considered the following issues, but it may be worth
setting them out in black and white:

1) If some of your forms are "variations on a theme", consider whether
you can either design a "base Form" and just modify copies of it to
get the final Forms or use fewer, multipurpose, forms with some fields
made visible/invisible depending on the task being performed or the
privileges of the user. This is often a very useful approach when
different categoies of user have different rights to see/change the
contents of different fields.

2) The less IT skilled the target user, the more care has to be taken
over Form design (IMHO). If some of your Forms are only going to be
used by yourself or other skilled users, you may be able to tolerate
those being Wizard-produced forms with limited tweaks, while
concentrating on optimising the ones seen by end users.

3) Utility is generally more important than beauty! If your forms work
for their intended use, additional time spent making everything line
up and look as beautiful as possible may not be well spent. This
depends on the target "audience", of course - different rules apply to
applications that are for internal use than to applications which are
to be marketed to customers, but even there, the customer may be
prepared to trade off price and beauty.

I need to create about 60 to 70 forms in Access 2003 and I am finding that
it is still as hard to do as it was in Access 2.

I need something more refined than the wizard created forms. The wizards
assign as much space to a single character field as it does to a sixty
character field.

I find creating forms on a mainframe a lot easier because I am restricted to
24 rows of eighty columns. With Access 2003 I waste a lot of time moving
fields around because they CAN be moved in increments of thousands of an
inch.

So what am I missing? Are there any features or techniques within Access
2003 to make this task less tedious?

John... Visio MVP
Click to expand...


Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher
 
John,

We have built a simple MS Access application framework.

What this does is provide a platform for all our business applications.
Among user based security management, menus, lookup screens, (all
dynamically generated by tables) there is a screen generator. The screens
are defined in tables and you say if you want the next field to follow the
previous or start at a new place. This cuts down making a very professional
screen from several hours to 15minutes. Also, all changes are made to one
screen. This has incredibly shorted projects with many supporting master
screens!

We also have a lookup screen that is generated from tables. Any enhancements
made to one screen all automatically on ALL lookups or forms! Very powerful!
We had a customer who wants to know which user changed which field on which
date. In an hour we had the basic concept down and on every screen in the
program!!

The downside is that some very complicated screen may need to be made
manually if our master dynamic screen doesn't have the function you need. Or
you could add the function to the dynamic screen.

Matt
 
Hi John

Instead of using the wiz, set up one form with the basic look that you want:
font name, size, style, default properties, event procedures, ... The form
does not contain the controls, but is set up ready do go. Details:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~allenbrowne/ser-43.html

Now you can drag the contols you want from the Field List (View menu), and
they inherit the properties you specified. Then run the mouse through
several controls at once to select them, and type the width, left, etc into
the Properties box. It does still take some time, but not as much time as it
takes to write for validation, filtering, navigation, concurrency, or
reporting options specific to the form.
 
1. When you use Cntrl + Up/Down/Left/Right arrow, Access will move the
Controls in fairly small units of distance. However, if you simply use the
Up/Down/Left/Right arrow, Access moves the selected Controls a reasonable
distance.

2. Personally, I move one Control to the right position, the move the other
Controls using the Menu Format / Align Top/Bottom/Left/Right to move other
Controls. This way, I move and align the Controls at the same time.
 
I believe there is no need to choose between utility and
appearance. It can be pretty straightforward to line up
controls, or to make them the same size. Fancy graphics
are unnecessary, but a clean look is essential, IMHO, if
it is to be used by others. Perhaps it comes from
personal experience, but forms and other database objects
that appear sloppy often are sloppy. Revising or updating
sloppy databases tends to be quite a chore, and adds a lot
of time later even if the orignal database was ready an
hour or two sooner.
The things I have found to speed things up the most are
the align, size, horizontal spacing, vertical spacing, and
grouping tools. Having said that, Microsoft seems to have
assumed that people will use their automatic formatting,
wizards, and other fluff, and so have made it far more
difficult than it should be to actually work with their
products on a professional level. No MS program is worse
in that way than Word, but Access certainly has its
moments.
 
I thought someone would react to that! It was presented only as a
thought - and not the most important of a number of them. I have had
your experience, too, but I have also run into applications where I
wished the original writer had spent a lot less time making the
screens beautiful, and a lot more thinking about his table and query
structures!

I believe there is no need to choose between utility and
appearance. It can be pretty straightforward to line up
controls, or to make them the same size. Fancy graphics
are unnecessary, but a clean look is essential, IMHO, if
it is to be used by others. Perhaps it comes from
personal experience, but forms and other database objects
that appear sloppy often are sloppy. Revising or updating
sloppy databases tends to be quite a chore, and adds a lot
of time later even if the orignal database was ready an
hour or two sooner.
The things I have found to speed things up the most are
the align, size, horizontal spacing, vertical spacing, and
grouping tools. Having said that, Microsoft seems to have
assumed that people will use their automatic formatting,
wizards, and other fluff, and so have made it far more
difficult than it should be to actually work with their
products on a professional level. No MS program is worse
in that way than Word, but Access certainly has its
moments.
Click to expand...


Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher
 
I agree that there is an overemphasis in many cases on
glitz and appearances. I would rather see the default
background with controls neatly lined up and clearly
labeled than an elaborate veneer over a shaky structure.
My only point was that aligning and spacing controls can
be done quickly and efficiently. Perhaps my preferences
are colored by my understanding of what goes into form
design. When controls seem to have been dragged and
dropped somewhere near their intended locations and then
just left there I start to become suspicious of the
overall approach. In particular I recall one database
that was a mess to look at, and that generated monthly
reports by means of twelve separate queries.
I also meant to mention that sometimes I have created
utilitrian forms by starting with autoform, which quickly
populates the form with controls. By using the format
painter and the alignment and spacing tools I can whip it
into shape pretty quickly.
I very much agree with you that the skill level of the
user is an important consideration in form design, and
that the really important thing is structure.
 
Thanks for the feedback.

So it looks like my initial assumption was corrrect and that forms design in
Access has a lot of room for improvement.

The concept of using a table to define the from layout is interesting. It is
similar to a technique that I use on the mainframe.

Simple guidelines on the form would help along with the ability to snap to
them

Ideally I would like to see the form designers have the ability to create a
set of objects that can be placed on a page and that modifying these objects
would be reflected across all forms that use the objects.

John... Visio MVP

Need stencils or ideas? http://www.mvps.org/visio/3rdparty.htm
Need VBA examples? http://www.mvps.org/visio/VBA.htm
Common Visio Questions http://www.mvps.org/visio/common_questions.htm
 
Hi,


use a sub-form?


Vanderghast, Access MVP




(...)

Ideally I would like to see the form designers have the ability to create
a set of objects that can be placed on a page and that modifying these
objects would be reflected across all forms that use the objects.
Click to expand...

(...)
 
Hi,


Alternatively, you can use the unsupported functions SaveAsText, to get
the an all text representation of your Access object, edit it from a text
editor, and LoadAsText the modified text. At your own risks.

Application.SaveAsText acForm, FormName, fullPathAndFileNameDotTxt

Would produce the text representation of your form.

That is not completely an automatism, but it may be somehow easier than
to open the form in design mode and use VBA automation to modify the
controls.

Being not supported, these functions may change in behavior from
versions to versions, and can even kill an application. Not necessary a good
idea to use such possible bomb in application deliver to many clients.


Vanderghast, Access MVP
 
Back
Top