Auto Center
By Richard Rost
3 years ago
Auto Center and Why I Never Liked Using It Before
In this Microsoft Access tutorial, I'll be teaching you about the Auto Center Form property. I'll show you how to use it and explain its benefits. Additionally, I'll discuss why I didn't use it for many years, touching on issues with pop-up forms and multi-monitor setups. Finally, I'll demonstrate how to make a minor adjustment to lower an auto-centered form slightly, as Access tends to position them too high vertically.
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TechHelp Access 2016, Access 2019, Access 2021, Access 365, Microsoft Access, MS Access, MS Access Tutorial, #msaccess, #microsoftaccess, #help, #howto, #tutorial, #learn, #lesson, #training, #database, Auto Center Form Property, Access Form Alignment, Pop-Up Forms, Multi-Monitor Setup, Form Positioning, Vertical Alignment, Adjusting Form Position, Form Centering Issue, VBA Form Adjustment, Access Dual Monitor Issue, Customizing Form Placement, Form Layout Best Practices
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Intro In this video, we will talk about the Auto Center property for forms in Microsoft Access. I will show you how to enable Auto Center, explain how it affects form positioning, and discuss its past reliability issues, especially with pop-up and dialog forms on multi-monitor setups. You'll see how the property works now, why it centers forms slightly high, and how to adjust the form's vertical placement with a little bit of VBA code to position it exactly where you want.Transcript Welcome to another TechHelp video brought to you by AccessLearningZone.com. I'm your instructor, Richard Rost.
In today's video, we're going to talk about the Auto Center form property in Microsoft Access. I'm going to show you how to use it, what it's good for, and why I thought for many years it didn't work, because it didn't really.
The Auto Center property of a form will make it so that the form opens up in the middle of the Access application window. Now, it doesn't take into consideration the navigation pane or the ribbon across the top up here.
Normally, if you take a form and move it over here, let's say, and save it there (Control+S), save that position, close it, open it back up again, it usually opens in the same spot. Move it down here, save it, Control+S, close it, open it, and it opens up in the same spot. Even if you move it over here during the course of using it, if you close it and reopen it, it will open back up where you saved it last, in Form View.
If you're a beginner, make sure you're using overlapping windows, not the tabbed document interface. I cover that in my Access Beginner 1 class, or you can go watch this video which explains it. I like the individual overlapping windows and not the big tabbed documents. That's just my personal preference.
Now, what Auto Center does: if you go into Design View here, go to the form's properties by clicking on that little box right there, and you'll find on the Format tab Auto Center is right there. It's normally set to No; we're going to change that to Yes. Save it, close it, close it, and open it, and it pops up right in the middle of the screen.
Even if you move it over here and save it and close it and open it, it still goes right back to the middle of the screen. Sometimes that's desirable, sometimes it's not; it depends on what you want to do.
Notice that it centers perfectly. If you look here, it centers perfectly on the right side. What is that, about 270 pixels, and over here from there to there, that's about 270ish pixels. Top to bottom, though, it usually rides a little high. If you look from here to here, that's, what, 118 vertical, and down here we got, what, 230. So it always rides a little bit high.
I guess that's just the way that Microsoft thinks that people want their forms to appear. We'll talk about this at the end of class a little bit more, but it's basically centered. I might not have said every single syllable, but I basically said the words. (Movie quote - what was it?)
Now, here's the rub. If you go in and, let's say, this is a pop-up form, where's the pop-up setting? Under Other, and then change Pop Up to Yes. Same thing happens with dialogs. If you close it and then open it, save it, open it back up again, it works.
But it didn't always work. It used to happen a lot in older versions of Access, especially with multi-monitor setups, and I've had a multi-monitor setup for as long as I can remember, probably going back to the 90s.
If you had Access on one screen, the pop-up window could appear anywhere, appear on the different screen in different locations. It was extremely unreliable. In fact, if you go and Google "Access Auto Center not working for pop-up or dialog forms," there are tons of discussions from around that time period: 2007, 2002, 2011, 2013. It seems like Microsoft fixed this somewhere around 2013, but I never got the memo. I just stopped using it.
I don't really like to use pop-up forms. In general, I usually try to stay away from them, mostly because of this problem, because they're very unreliable where they appear. So I kind of wrote them off years and years ago.
If you are a beginner and want to learn more about modal and pop-up windows, go watch this video. I talk about them in a lot more detail and why I generally don't use pop-up forms.
But I recently did a developer-level video called the Custom Message Box, where we make a new message box you can pop up as a pop-up form. It's basically a dialog form, which is also pop-up, so you can customize it with colors and the buttons and all that stuff. And one of the problems is getting it to center perfectly in the middle of the screen.
I always thought that with pop-ups and dialogs, Auto Center didn't do its job properly, because it didn't for many, many years. In fact, I even went and asked ChatGPT about it, and GPT even said, yeah, there were some problems with Auto Center, particularly around the 2007-2013 releases, and it was more pronounced in multi-monitor setups, which was me, which is why I stopped using them.
You can pause the video and read that if you really want to, but it turns out that Microsoft did fix it a few years back. Thanks to Simon on YouTube for pointing that out to me.
So it looks like now, and I just tested it a whole bunch, it is quite reliable. It does work for me. I've got a multi-monitor setup, and I tried a bunch of different databases with some pop-up forms and some dialog forms, and it is working well now.
For my members who are watching, we did an extended cut with that custom message box where I showed you how, with VBA code, to center that dialog over the Access window. We figure out the positioning of both windows, we do a little math, and we put it right where we want it. Now, that code is still good; it wasn't a waste of time, but you can use the Auto Center property a little easier.
This is still good if you want to position a pop-up window, maybe in a specific spot. Like, maybe you want to position it over an existing form, that kind of stuff. So it's definitely good code to have, but Auto Center will work just fine.
Now, speaking of automatically positioning stuff, we've got the Auto Center on here, like I mentioned at the top of the video. It centers nicely left and right, horizontally, but vertically it's up toward the top, and I think that's by design. I think Microsoft realizes that pop-ups, you usually want it to be a little higher, because if it was exactly centered, it would be kind of down here. Those would look a little low visually.
How can we adjust that? Here's a little bonus for developers. If you're not a developer yet and you want to be, go watch my Intro to VBA video. It's about 20 minutes long and it teaches you everything you need to know to get started. Don't be scared; VBA is easy to learn. You only need to know a couple commands to make some really cool stuff.
All you have to do is tell this form, hey, after you open and your Auto Center property kicks in, move down just a little bit. How far? Well, that's kind of up to you. Let's say it opens up here, and you want to move it down maybe, I don't know, about that far. Let's say that's going to be about maybe 1500.
Remember, there's twips and pixels and all kinds of weird stuff. So we're going to have to move it down a little bit. Let's say 1500.
Let's go into Design View. One of my pet peeves of pop-up forms is they always do this in Design View. When you switch to Design View, and I don't know a way around that. So if any of you guys do, let me know. It just pops it in the upper left corner like that.
Go into the form's properties, go to Events, find the On Open event. Use On Open, don't use On Load for this one; it seems to not work well in On Load. I think because on Load some of the properties aren't available.
When your VBA editor opens up, let me move this over here. All we're going to do is say, once you've opened up, I want you to move down a little bit. So it's going to be Me.Move. Move is the current form. Now, the Left property is required. Notice how it's not in brackets and italicized, that means you have to put it in there. But I don't want to change the Left, I don't want to say zero, either, because I don't want to move it back to the left, so we have to put in there the current left position, which is Me.WindowLeft (whatever the current left position is). We're not moving it up and down; that should be an optional property. Access team, change that. Okay, get on that one. Just kidding.
Top - now, Top, I want it to go down. I want to increase this value a certain amount. So we're going to say Me.WindowTop, wherever you are, plus maybe 1500. Those are twips, by the way, not pixels. Windows works in pixels and Access works in twips, and it's about a 15 to 1 ratio. That's a long, weird discussion. I'll have that in another video; I think I did it in the extended cut that I talked about earlier.
Save that, let's close it, close it, open it, boom, there you go. See, it opened up auto-centered about up here, and then it moved down a little bit. That's all you've got to do.
If you think that's a bit too much, if you want more, well, you just put it where you want to put it. I'm going to move it down a whole lot. Move it down 4000. Open it up and it opened up on my other monitor. That was way too much. Let me see here, yeah, there it goes.
Sometimes when you move those coordinates, the form resizes just a little bit, so it's not perfect, but I think this is about a good setting here. Let's see. Close it, open it, yeah, that's good, that looks good.
So that's the Auto Center property and why I generally haven't used it for many years, and why I avoid pop-up forms and all that stuff. Thanks again to Simon for pointing this out to me, and that's going to be your TechHelp video for today.
I hope you learned something. I learned something. I love when you guys teach me stuff, because I do this all day long. I've been doing it for 30 years, and every now and then, especially when you guys point out things that have changed that I've missed, because I learned Access back in the 90s and 2000s, and there's some stuff that I haven't used a lot and I don't always catch it when the Microsoft team puts in new features.
It was different back in the day when a big new version was coming out, Access 2003 or 2007, and you'd buy the book and you'd read what was new. But now, especially with Office 365, they're constantly pushing new stuff out - including bugs (just kidding).
So I sometimes miss new stuff myself. I love it if you guys come up with anything new that I might have missed in a video, or I don't know about. I love when you guys teach me too. I love that this is a two-way conversation, so feel free to post in the comments down below or even drop me an email. Let me know, hey Rick, you messed up, this works now. Oh, okay, great.
There's a lot of stuff that I skipped, like formal layouts, for example. Back in the day, when I think they were released in 2007, when the ribbon was released, I still to this day don't really like formal layouts, but they do have some good uses. For example, anchoring is really cool.
I could talk forever about this stuff, but I'm going to let you guys go. Live long and prosper, my friends. I'll see you next time.Quiz Q1. What does the Auto Center property in Microsoft Access do?
A. It automatically resizes a form to fit the application window
B. It opens the form in the middle of the Access application window
C. It hides the navigation pane
D. It centers the form in the middle of the screen, accounting for all toolbars
Q2. When using the Auto Center property, which items does it ignore when centering the form?
A. Pop-up settings
B. The ribbon and navigation pane
C. Other open forms
D. Form controls
Q3. If you manually move and save a form's position, then reopen it without Auto Center enabled, what happens?
A. It opens in the center of the screen
B. It opens minimized
C. It opens where you last saved it
D. It opens as a pop-up
Q4. Which window mode is recommended for beginners to best see effects like Auto Center?
A. Tabbed Document Interface
B. Full Screen Mode
C. Overlapping Windows
D. Split Screen
Q5. How do you enable the Auto Center property for a form in Access?
A. Set Auto Center to Yes in the Format tab of the forms properties
B. Right-click the form and select Center
C. Press Control+Center while the form is open
D. Set Auto Center to Yes in the Data tab of the forms properties
Q6. What happens when a form with Auto Center enabled is also set as a pop-up or dialog?
A. Auto Center does not work with pop-up or dialog forms
B. The pop-up or dialog will center reliably in newer versions of Access
C. The form opens in a random location
D. The form always opens minimized
Q7. Why did the instructor avoid using pop-up forms for many years?
A. Pop-up forms could not be customized
B. The forms would reset data on open
C. Auto Center was unreliable, especially on multi-monitor setups
D. Pop-up forms do not support buttons
Q8. How does the instructor suggest programmatically adjusting a form's vertical position after Auto Center is applied?
A. Change the Top property in Design View manually
B. Use the On Load event to move the form down with VBA
C. Use the On Open event and set the form's Top property with code
D. Adjust the Form Footer height for spacing
Q9. What unit of measurement does Access primarily use for form positioning in VBA?
A. Inches
B. Pixels
C. Points
D. Twips
Q10. Based on the video, why might you still want to use VBA to control a form's position even when Auto Center is available?
A. To move the form from one database to another
B. To place the form in a location other than exactly centered
C. To prevent users from moving forms
D. To automatically switch interface modes
Q11. What did the instructor discover about the current reliability of the Auto Center property in Access?
A. It is still unreliable in all situations
B. It works only with non-pop-up forms
C. It works reliably now, even with pop-up and dialog forms, in recent versions of Access
D. It has been discontinued
Q12. What is the ratio of twips to pixels mentioned in the video?
A. 10 to 1
B. 15 to 1
C. 100 to 1
D. 1 to 1
Answers: 1-B; 2-B; 3-C; 4-C; 5-A; 6-B; 7-C; 8-C; 9-D; 10-B; 11-C; 12-B
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.Summary Today's TechHelp tutorial from Access Learning Zone focuses on the Auto Center property for forms in Microsoft Access. I am going to explain how this property works, why you would want to use it, the history behind some of its past issues, and how to fine-tune your forms' appearance in your database.
The Auto Center property determines whether a form opens centered in the main Access application window. When set to Yes, this property will cause the form to display in the middle of the Access window, regardless of where it was previously located. However, it does not account for the navigation pane on the left or the ribbon at the top, so the centering is not always mathematically perfect in every direction.
Normally, if you manually move a form to a specific spot, save its position, close it, and then reopen it, Access will remember and restore it to that same spot. This makes it easy to lay out your forms just the way you like. If you're new to Access, make sure you are using overlapping windows rather than the tabbed document interface. I talk more about this choice in my Beginner 1 class and in a separate video, but my preference is for individual, overlapping forms.
Once you set Auto Center to Yes in the form's property sheet (which you can do on the Format tab), Access will ignore your saved position and always open the form in the center of the application window. This happens each time you reopen the form, even if you moved and saved it somewhere else before closing. Whether or not you want this behavior depends on your database design and workflow.
When you look closely at a form that's been auto-centered, you may notice that it aligns perfectly from left to right, but sits a little higher than true vertical center. For example, there may be roughly equal pixels on the left and right sides, but the top margin is noticeably thinner than the bottom. This seems to be by Microsoft's design, probably to keep popups and dialogs in a more eye-catching, upper position.
The situation becomes more interesting with pop-up and dialog forms. If you set a form to Pop Up or Dialog, Auto Center will still generally work as expected now. However, that wasn't always the case. In older versions of Access, especially if you were using multiple monitors, pop-up forms would often open in unpredictable places, including sometimes on the wrong monitor entirely. This made Auto Center an unreliable option, especially for developers like me who have used multi-monitor setups for decades.
If you research historical issues, you'll find plenty of forum discussions about Auto Center malfunctioning with pop-up or dialog forms dating back to the early 2000s up through about 2013. It appears that Microsoft resolved these problems somewhere around Access 2013, but as it happened without much fanfare, many of us abandoned using the feature long ago. In my case, I quit relying on pop-up forms in general, and stopped recommending Auto Center for dialogs, simply because of these longstanding inconsistencies.
If you're interested in the technical history or how to use modal and pop-up forms, I go deeper into those topics in other videos, including one specifically on custom message boxes. In that lesson, I cover designing your own dialog boxes and customizing their look, giving you more flexibility than the standard Access message box. One challenge in that project was keeping the custom dialog window centered over your application, something that used to require manual positioning with VBA code.
Historically, you had to write your own code to position pop-up or dialog forms where you wanted them. Even modern AI tools like ChatGPT agree that, in the past, Auto Center was spotty, especially for those with more than one monitor. I can confirm from personal experience that it simply didn't do the job consistently for many years, which is why I educated my students on alternate solutions.
However, after receiving a tip from a viewer on YouTube (thank you, Simon), I recently tested Auto Center again and found that it is now reliable, even in complex multi-monitor environments. I went through multiple databases and tested forms with both pop-up and dialog settings, and Auto Center consistently opened them correctly in the middle of the Access window.
For those of you who are TechHelp members, you might recall that in the Extended Cut of the Custom Message Box video, I demonstrated how to use VBA to calculate the exact center and move a dialog form using code, giving precise control over placement. Even though Auto Center is reliable now, knowing how to programmatically position forms is still valuable, especially when you want custom placements, such as centering a dialog over a specific form instead of the entire application window.
Despite Microsoft's improvements to Auto Center, the property still tends to center forms a bit high on the screen. If you want a perfectly balanced vertical placement, or simply want your form to sit lower, you can adjust this with a bit of VBA. After the form opens and Auto Center has done its job, you can run a little code to move the form down as far as you like.
To implement this, you put code in the form's On Open event (not On Load, since required properties might not be available immediately during the Load event). This code tells Access to keep the current horizontal placement, but increase the Top property by a specified amount. Note that Access measures form positions in twips, not pixels. There are about 15 twips in one pixel, so you'll need to factor that in for your adjustments.
You might need to experiment with how far you move the form. If you adjust the Top property by 1500 or 2000 twips, you can find a placement that looks right to you. If you accidentally move your form way off-screen or onto another monitor, just reduce the amount and try again.
This combination of the Auto Center property and optional VBA tweaks gives you great flexibility over your forms' locations. It's useful to understand why I and other long-time developers stopped using Auto Center for so long, and why I avoided pop-up forms as a result. But now, with these improvements, you can reliably use Auto Center and make further adjustments through code if you need a more refined placement.
As a final thought, I appreciate all the feedback and tips I get from students and viewers. I have been working with Access for decades, and while I do my best to keep up with all the changes, the switch to constant updates via Office 365 means that new features sometimes slip by unnoticed. I encourage everyone to share anything you discover, especially helpful updates or tricks that would benefit other Access users.
If you have any questions about this topic, post them in the comments or send me an email. You never know when your input might lead to an update or correction in one of my lessons. I want this to be an interactive community and I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
To wrap up, this was a look at how to use the Auto Center property in Access forms, why you might want to use it, how you can make additional adjustments, and the history of some of its old quirks. 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 List Auto Center property overview in Microsoft Access forms
Saving and restoring form window positions
Switching from tabbed documents to overlapping windows
Setting the Auto Center property in form Design View
Form centering behavior with and without Auto Center
Effect of Auto Center on pop-up and dialog forms
History of Auto Center reliability in older Access versions
Multi-monitor issues with Auto Center in past versions
Current reliability of Auto Center for pop-up forms
Vertical alignment behavior of Auto Center
Adjusting form position after Auto Center using VBA
Using On Open event to move a form programmatically
Working with Me.Move and Me.WindowLeft/Me.WindowTop
Understanding twips versus pixels in Access form positioning |
