Control names too long for "Tab Order" window
Tom_F
I am trying to re-number the "tab index" for a large number of
controls on a form. When I try to do this one control at a time,
Access automatically re-numbers the tab index for some of the other
controls, thereby messing up what I'm trying to do. I know about the
"View--Tab Order" option, but the trouble with this is that it doesn't
show entire field names ... and my field names are rather long.
Therefore, I can't always tell which field is which!
Any ideas on how to proceed would be very welcome. I'm using Access
2003. Thanks, Best,
--Tom
CDMAP...@fortunejames.com
From:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.ms-access/browse_frm/thread/3e0a3bfba9c2f50c
Dragging all the controls off the Detail section and dragging them
back in the desired order worked well for me.
James A. Fortune
CDMAP...@FortuneJames.com
Tom_F
> On Jun 20, 5:35 pm, Tom_F <fret...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > To comp.databases.ms-access --
>
> > I am trying to re-number the "tab index" for a large number of
> > controls on a form. When I try to do this one control at a time,
> > Access automatically re-numbers the tab index for some of the other
> > controls, thereby messing up what I'm trying to do. I know about the
> > "View--Tab Order" option, but the trouble with this is that it doesn't
> > show entire field names ... and my field names are rather long.
> > Therefore, I can't always tell which field is which!
>
> > Any ideas on how to proceed would be very welcome. I'm using Access
> > 2003. Thanks, Best,
>
> > --Tom
>
> From:
>
>
> Dragging all the controls off the Detail section and dragging them
> back in the desired order worked well for me.
>
> James A. Fortune
Mr. Fortune --
Thanks for the idea! I guess I'll try that if I have to ... but the
thought of having to re-do all that painstaking arrangement of
controls is a bit daunting. Does anyone out there have any other
approaches I might try? Thanks!
--Tom
DavidB
>
> > To comp.databases.ms-access --
>
> > I am trying to re-number the "tab index" for a large number of
> > controls on a form. When I try to do this one control at a time,
> > Access automatically re-numbers the tab index for some of the other
> > controls, thereby messing up what I'm trying to do. I know about the
> > "View--Tab Order" option, but the trouble with this is that it doesn't
> > show entire field names ... and my field names are rather long.
> > Therefore, I can't always tell which field is which!
>
> > Any ideas on how to proceed would be very welcome. I'm using Access
> > 2003. Thanks, Best,
>
> > --Tom
>
> From:
>
>
> Dragging all the controls off the Detail section and dragging them
> back in the desired order worked well for me.
>
> James A. Fortune
In the manual renumber mode the way I have found to get around the
issue you describe is to number the tab order starting with the last
item and working back to the first.
CDMAP...@fortunejames.com
> Mr. Fortune --
>
> Thanks for the idea! I guess I'll try that if I have to ... but the
> thought of having to re-do all that painstaking arrangement of
> controls is a bit daunting. Does anyone out there have any other
> approaches I might try? Thanks!
>
> --Tom
I'll see if I can try out Smartin's idea this weekend. The alignment
tools worked well for my arrangement so it took little time to get
them back. Consequently, I didn't have to resort to anything else.
Smartin's idea seems the better way to go. My subconscious is already
starting to generate ideas. One time I awoke from a night of sleep
with the solution to a difficult mathematical proof. Alas, my
customers don't pay me for the time I spend solving problems while
sleeping unless I'm working on a contract basis :-).
James A. Fortune
CDMAP...@FortuneJames.com
Tom_F
Thanks! I tried this "last to first" method. It worked some of the
time, but not all of the time (sometimes the tab order got
scrambled). Perhaps my situation is complicated by the fact that my
controls are located on a page of a "tab control"? In any event, I
FOUND A SOLUTION which seems to work for me. First, I temporarily re-
name the controls so that they start with "01", "02", etc. Then, when
I use "View--Tab Order", I can determine the order that I want, no
matter how long the field names are. Once the desired tab order is
set, I simply re-name the controls back to their original names. As I
said, this seems to work for me (fingers crossed). Thanks again to
you, and to all the others, for helping me with this problem! Best,
--Tom
CDMAP...@fortunejames.com
> On Jun 20, 8:24 pm, Tom_F <fret...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > Mr.Fortune--
>
> > Thanks for the idea! I guess I'll try that if I have to ... but the
> > thought of having to re-do all that painstaking arrangement of
> > controls is a bit daunting. Does anyone out there have any other
> > approaches I might try? Thanks!
>
> > --Tom
>
> tools worked well for my arrangement so it took little time to get
> them back. Consequently, I didn't have to resort to anything else.
> Smartin's idea seems the better way to go. My subconscious is already
> starting to generate ideas. One time I awoke from a night of sleep
> with the solution to a difficult mathematical proof. Alas, my
> customers don't pay me for the time I spend solving problems while
> sleeping unless I'm working on a contract basis :-).
>
> James A.Fortune
I thought of several UI's to handle this. I'll have to decide which
one to use. The "last to first" method was based on the behavior when
manually changing a Tab Order number of Access trying to keep the
other controls in the same relative Tab Order. After the user has
selected the order they want, the "last to first" renumbering should
work when renumbering with VBA.
James A. Fortune
CDMAP...@FortuneJames.com
CDMAP...@fortunejames.com
> I thought of several UI's to handle this. I'll have to decide which
> one to use. The "last to first" method was based on the behavior when
> manually changing a Tab Order number of Access trying to keep the
> other controls in the same relative Tab Order. After the user has
> selected the order they want, the "last to first" renumbering should
> work when renumbering with VBA.
Here's one of the UI's. The code is a little long to post so I placed
a copy of the A97 version of what I did here:
http://personalwebs.oakland.edu/~fortune/TabOrder.zip
Notes:
1) I used local tables for the form and control names. This might be
better done with arrays.
2) It is presented "as is," with no warranties or guarantees of any
kind.
3) If the two tables and two forms are placed into a database, it
should work for any form in that database. Maybe I'll change it to
create the tables if they're missing.
4) It worked on the limited number of forms that I tried.
5) It should convert to later versions of Access.
Enjoy,
James A. Fortune
CDMAP...@FortuneJames.com