When you’re building an application, you should establish a standard design for all your client forms and the controls on your forms.
You can use the Set Control Defaults button in the Controls group on the Design tab to change the defaults for the various controls on your form. If you want to change the default property settings for all new controls of a particular type, select a control of that type, set the control’s properties to the desired default values, and then click the Set Control Defaults button in the Controls group on the Design tab. The settings of the currently selected control will become the default settings for any subsequent definitions of that type of control on your form.
For example, you might want all new labels to show blue text on a white background. To make this change, place a label on your form, and set the label’s Fore Color property to blue and its Back Color property to white using the Font Color and Background Color buttons in the Font group on the Format tab. Click the Set Control Defaults button in the Controls group on the Design tab while this label is selected. Any new labels you place on the form will have the new default settings.
Inside Out: What Happened to the AutoFormats?
In Access 2010, the AutoFormats for forms and reports are no longer on the default ribbon. You can still use the AutoFormats, but you’ll need to create an entry point for yourself by adding the command to the Quick Access Toolbar or to a custom ribbon group. On the Quick Access Toolbar or Customize Ribbon category of the Access Options dialog box, select Commands Not In The Ribbon from the Choose Commands From list. You can click the AutoFormat option on the left side and then click Add to add the command to the Quick Access Toolbar or custom ribbon group. Click OK to save your changes. You can then use the 25 AutoFormat options for your client forms and reports.
You can also create a special form to define new default properties for all your controls. To do this, open a new blank form and place on it one of each type of control for which you want to define default properties. Modify the properties of the controls to your liking, use these controls to reset the control defaults for the form (by clicking the Set Control Defaults button in the Controls group on the Design tab for each control), and save the form with the name Normal. The Normal form becomes the form template for the current database. Any new control you place on any new form created after you define your form template (except forms for which you’ve already changed the default for one or more controls) will use the default property settings you defined for that control type on the Normal form. Note that defining a form template does not affect any existing forms. Also, you can revert to the standard settings by deleting the form Normal from your database.
To define a name other than Normal for your default form and report templates, click the File tab on the Backstage view, click Options, and then click the Object Designers category. Enter the new name in the Form Template text box in the Form/Report Design View section. Then save your template under the new name you specified in the Object Designers category. Note that this new setting becomes the default for all databases on your machine, but if Access doesn’t find a form in your database with the name you specified, it uses the standard default settings instead.
If you want to see how this works in the HousingDataCopy.accdb sample database, click the File tab on the Backstage view, click Options, and then click the Object Designers category. In the Form/Report Design View section, enter zsfrmTemplate in the Form Template box, and click OK. Next, click the Blank Form button in the Forms group on the Create tab to create a blank form. Your new form should have a header and footer and a custom background. Try dropping a few controls onto the form. Figure 14-28 shows you our template in Design view. Note that your new form not only inherits control properties but also inherits the height and width of each of the sections from the template.
