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Rotate Labels By Richard Rost 
4 years ago
Rotate Labels & Text Boxes with the Vertical Setting In this video, I'm going to teach you how to rotate labels and text boxes in your Microsoft Access forms and reports using the Vertical setting. Links
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IntroIn this video, I will show you how to rotate labels and text boxes vertically in Microsoft Access forms and reports using the vertical property setting. We'll go through examples of setting up vertical labels for fields like billing and shipping, discuss some formatting options, and cover the limitations of Access when it comes to rotating objects at other angles. I'll also demonstrate how you can create rotated labels in Microsoft Word and insert them into Access as images if you need more advanced rotation effects.TranscriptWelcome to another Fast Tips video brought to you by AccessLearningZone.com. I am your instructor Richard Rost.In today's video, I'm going to show you how to rotate labels and text boxes in Microsoft Access with the vertical setting. I get asked this question quite frequently. People want to know if it's possible to rotate either labels or text boxes in Microsoft Access. It's possible to rotate them 90 degrees using something called the vertical setting. This will work the same way for labels and text boxes and it works in both forms and reports. Let me show you how to do it. Let's go into form design view here and let's say we've got two different sets of address fields. We've got billing and we've got shipping. I'm going to take all these guys and slide them over just a little bit. I'll bring these ones down just a hair. Let's put a billing label right over here going vertically. I'll copy any one of these guys, copy, paste, and I'll put the word billing in here like that. Then go to the other tab, find vertical, and change that to yes and you'll see what it does. It rotates the text in there 90 degrees clockwise. You can center the text inside that label and resize it like so. Let me do that and we'll slide it right up over here. Make it the same height as that stuff and let's move it over just a touch more. There we go. Click on it and let's give it a background color, maybe a dark blue, and then a foreground color of white and bold it if you want to. Maybe change the size. There's your billing and then for shipping, we'll just copy these fields, copy, paste, paste them down below there. We'll just change this one to shipping. Remember, click on it and then change it over here in the tab. Otherwise, it'll resize that label. Change that to shipping. Maybe go with dark red like that. That's purple. Good enough. The same thing works with text boxes too. If you want to go to text boxes and turn the vertical to yes, although I really don't know why you'd ever want to do that. I've never wanted to type in text vertically, although this might work well in a report because you can do this in a report too. You want your text to go vertically inside a report. Of course, if this is a separate set of fields, don't forget to change where these are bound to. You have billing address and shipping address in your table. You don't want to change that control source there. Now can you rotate them the other way? No. Can you rotate them 180 degrees or 45 degrees? No. That's it. You get one change: vertical. That's basically a 90 degree clockwise rotation. Now in my research for this video, there are some third party ActiveX controls and some plugins I found that you can use that will allow rotation at pretty much any angle. I have not tried these so I can't speak for them. Some of them are on some pretty reputable sites like MVPs and such. Go Google search it and find them if you want to. I personally don't like to use third party plugins. I like to use only the controls that are part of Microsoft Access for several reasons, most of which being if you're planning on distributing this or sharing it in your office and you want to give other people copies of the database, they have to have exactly the same controls installed on their systems and that can become a nightmare for distribution. So if it's just you and you want rotated controls, go right ahead, install whatever plugins you want. Now can you make labels that look rotated if you just want that on a report or on a form? Sure. But you can't do it in Access alone because Access is the red-headed stepchild of Microsoft Office. You can do this with Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, but you can't do it with Access. Let me show you what I'm talking about. Here's Microsoft Word. If you want to create a label that's rotated, basically we're going to insert under shapes. I'm going to find this one right here: that's text boxes. Then draw a text box out. Say, "fancy label" like that. Resize it and center it and change font, bold, whatever you want to do. Make it dark blue. Change the background color to, I don't know, yellow. Make it a little bigger maybe. You can put a shadow behind it if you want, whatever fancy effects you want to use. Here, we'll put a shadow, we'll go down to the right like that. Looks pretty neat. Now, you can't just copy and paste this over to Access. Watch, if you copy this and you go over to Access and you try to paste it in here, it comes in weird. It comes in as an OLE unbound object, which you don't want. It'll look nasty. Trust me. So we're going to undo that. Get rid of that. What you are going to do is you're going to screen capture it and paste it in there as an image. If it's not rotated at all, that's pretty straightforward. You can use the Windows clipping tool, which I have another video on how to use. I'll put a link to it down below in the link section. If you haven't used that before, you don't know how to do a screen capture. I personally like to use a program called HyperSnap and I'll include a link to that. We'll just take our little screen capture of it. Just get that label as exact as you can. I'll ignore the shadow for now. We'll talk about the shadow in a second here. There we go. Now go over here to Access, click, and paste, and there's our fancy label. It looks pretty good. I'm going to click on it and go to special effects and we'll just make that flat so it doesn't look like it's sunken. Save it, close it, open it back up again and it looks pretty good. But it's not rotated. What happens if we rotate it? Well, design view. Can't rotate it in here again because Access. Access is a wonderful program. It really is. But I hate when Microsoft gives cool kinds of features to the other Office apps, Excel and PowerPoint and Word, but they leave Access out all the time. So we're going to click on this and we're going to simply rotate it just a little bit. But now if we screen grab it, you have to screen grab a square, of course, and then we paste it in here. You get that white background and there's no way in Access to pick a transparent color, again, like you can do in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. So what we have to do is we have to kind of cheat. We're going to screen capture the color that we want for this background form and bring that over to Word, like this area right here. Save it and then open up the form like this. Use your screen capture tool. You can grab a blank section where we're going to put that label. Paste that in the background. See that? Now just move this label over that like so. Now do a screen capture, get the square, come back over to Word. Design view. Word, no Access. Then paste it in there. There's your fancy label. Again, you have to turn off the stuff. Let's go to special effect. We might have to match the color too because if we go flat here and the border, let's see, yeah, the border width is going to be hairline but it's still going to be there because you can't have it completely gone. If you save this, close that, open it up, you're still going to see that little teeny tiny border. You have to match the border color too. So right click, design view. Click on this guy. The border color is background 1 darker. Let's get the form's background color, which is right here. It's accent 5, lighter 80, or you can use actual colors if you want. Click on that, go to the border color, and paste it in there. That should match up. I don't like using theme colors but in this particular case, it's what we've got. Now we'll go like this and then we'll go like that. Save it, close it, and open it up. Oh, I'm still seeing some stuff there. Hold on. Oh, I know what it is. I know what it is. So I'm going to go to the border color, change this here. Let's see if that does it. There we go. You have to change the background color and the border color. Now it's gone completely and you can see we matched up the color pretty closely. That's a trick you have to play if you want a rotated label. Some people do, some people don't. I personally have never needed one but I get asked this a lot so I figured I'd make a Fast Tips video for you about it. There you go. If you have any questions, post them down below. See you next time. QuizQ1. What does the vertical property do when set to Yes in Microsoft Access labels or text boxes?A. It rotates the text 90 degrees counterclockwise B. It rotates the text 90 degrees clockwise C. It rotates the text 180 degrees D. It mirrors the text horizontally Q2. Which of the following can you rotate vertically using the vertical property in Access? A. Only labels B. Only text boxes C. Both labels and text boxes D. Neither labels nor text boxes Q3. In which Access objects does the vertical property for rotating text work? A. Only in forms B. Only in reports C. Only in tables D. In both forms and reports Q4. What should you remember when copying fields for separate address types like billing and shipping? A. Change their background color B. Change the control source to the correct field C. Set the text orientation to horizontal D. Use bold font for shipping Q5. Can you rotate labels or text boxes by any angle other than 90 degrees in Access? A. Yes, you can rotate at any angle B. Yes, but only at 45 degrees C. No, only 90 degree (vertical) rotation is supported D. No, only 180 degree rotation is allowed Q6. What is one of the main disadvantages of using third party ActiveX controls for rotation in Access? A. They are always free B. They make distribution more complicated C. They are built into Access D. They only work in Excel Q7. Why might you avoid using third party plugins in an Access database you plan to share? A. They may change the text font automatically B. Everyone must have the same plugins installed C. They slow down performance by 50 percent D. They require internet access at all times Q8. How can you create a rotated label with a fancy effect for use in Access, given Access's limitations? A. Rotate text directly in Access design view B. Use Word, PowerPoint, or Excel to create and rotate the label, then paste it as an image in Access C. Use only the vertical property in Access D. Type each letter vertically, one at a time Q9. What happens if you try to paste a rotated label or shape directly from Word into Access? A. It pastes as a normal label with regular text B. It appears as a text box object C. It comes in as an OLE unbound object and may look incorrect D. It does not paste at all Q10. If you want a rotated label with a transparent background in Access, what workaround is suggested in the video? A. Use Access's transparency tool B. Paste the label as an image and match the background and border colors to the Access form C. It's not possible by any means D. Use a third party plugin for transparency Q11. Why does the presenter recommend matching both the background and border color when inserting a captured image as a label? A. To make the label easier to move around B. To ensure the label blends seamlessly with the form's background C. To improve the performance of the form D. To make the label look bold Q12. What is mentioned as the main reason why Access lacks some features present in other Office apps like Word or PowerPoint? A. Access is designed only for data storage B. Access is not updated regularly C. Access is treated as the "red-headed stepchild" of Microsoft Office, often missing certain features D. Access can only make tables Answers: 1-B; 2-C; 3-D; 4-B; 5-C; 6-B; 7-B; 8-B; 9-C; 10-B; 11-B; 12-C DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks. SummaryToday's video from Access Learning Zone focuses on how to rotate labels and text boxes in Microsoft Access using the vertical property. Many users often want to know if there is a way to display text vertically in Access, whether in forms or reports. There is an option to rotate the text by 90 degrees, which is achieved by setting the vertical property to yes.This feature works identically for both labels and text boxes, and you can use it in either forms or reports. For example, if you have separate sets of address fields for billing and shipping in your form, you can add a vertically oriented label to distinguish between them. You would simply create a label, enter the desired text, and then set the vertical property to yes. The text will then appear rotated 90 degrees clockwise. You can further customize this label by adjusting its size, position, color, and font formatting to match your design. The same vertical setting is available for text boxes, although it is less commonly used, since inputting vertical text is rarely practical. However, it could be a useful visual cue in reports where vertical text is sometimes needed. When duplicating sets of fields for billing and shipping, always make sure to adjust the control sources so that each section pulls from the correct data in your tables. Otherwise, fields may show the wrong information. At this point, you might be wondering if Access provides more rotation options, such as 180 or 45 degrees, or even counterclockwise rotation. Unfortunately, Access only allows this single 90-degree clockwise rotation with its built-in features. Any other angle or orientation is not natively available. There are some third-party ActiveX controls and plugins that can provide more versatility in rotating text at different angles. Some of these are distributed by reputable sources, but I prefer to stick with features included in Access itself. Relying on third-party tools can be problematic, especially if you need to share your database with others in your organization. Each user would need to have those custom controls installed, which can make distribution difficult. If your goal is just to make a rotated label for a form or report that looks visually appealing, you might notice that other Office programs like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint provide more options for rotating and formatting labels. Access unfortunately lags behind in this area. For example, in Word, you can create and rotate a text box freely, apply custom colors, add shadows, and more. Once you're happy with your design, though, you cannot simply copy and paste it directly into Access; it comes in as an unbound object and does not look right. To solve this, you can take a screen capture of the finished label and paste that captured image into your Access form or report. This works well if the label does not need to be rotated. If you need to capture a rotated label, the process becomes a bit trickier. You may need to match the background color of your Access form in Word, capture a section with the right color, and overlay your rotated text there before taking your screenshot. Once pasted into Access, you can further adjust shadow effects, border colors, and background to get the best possible appearance. Matching the border and background colors is important since Access may not otherwise provide true transparency, and you want the imported image to blend in seamlessly. For example, you might need to select the exact accent or theme color used by your form for both the background and border of your imported graphic, so you do not see unwanted borders around your label. Personally, I have not found the need for rotated labels in my own work, but many users ask about this feature, so I wanted to cover it here. If you have comments or questions on these techniques, feel free to reach out. You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends. Topic ListRotating labels and text boxes using the vertical setting in AccessApplying vertical text rotation in both forms and reports Centering and resizing vertical labels Customizing label color, font, and style for vertical text Duplicating and editing rotated labels for separate sections Limitations of text rotation options in Access Difference between Access and other Office programs for text rotation Creating rotated labels in Word using text boxes and shapes Screen capturing rotated labels for use in Access Inserting screen captured images as labels in Access Techniques for matching background and border colors for label images Removing unwanted borders for inserted label images |
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