Aesthetics
By Richard Rost
6 years ago
Form Design Aesthetics - Professional Looking Controls, Buttons
In this video I will show you how to make your forms look more professional with the look and feel of custom designed controls, backgrounds, and images.
Jannette from California (a Developer Student since 2018) asks, "My boss says my forms look too blocky. Is there a course that goes over form design for advanced developers?"
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I'll show you how to create buttons using custom images. You'll learn how to use VBA to control the mouse hover and click appearances too.
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Intro In this video, we will talk about improving the look and feel of your forms in Microsoft Access by exploring different techniques to customize form field and label aesthetics. You'll see how to use color schemes, gradients, and shapes from other Microsoft Office applications like Excel to create visually appealing backgrounds and less blocky form designs. We will also cover methods to work with background images, align controls, adjust grid settings, and make your Access forms stand out with better design options.Transcript Welcome to another TechHelp video brought to you by AccessLearningZone.com. I am your instructor, Richard Rost.
In today's lesson, we are going to talk about form design aesthetics and customizing form field and button appearance in your Microsoft Access databases.
Today's question comes from Genet from California, a developer student of mine since 2018. Genet says, my boss says my forms look too blocky. Is there a resource that goes over form design for advanced developers?
Genet actually posted this question in the Access forum on my website, and I answered her there. I said, well, I have to say that personally, I have always been more interested in functionality over form. Sure, I like to make my forms look good, with well-spaced fields, a good color scheme, readable fonts, etc. But aside from the basics, I never really went overboard making them look super pretty.
Now, I did cover making some colored buttons and different looking option groups in Access Expert Level 4. Looking over your student account, I noticed you skipped Access Level 4. A lot of people do that. A lot of people will skip over some of the beginner or low-level expert fields and jump right to the developer stuff, then realize later that they missed things like this. So there are some lessons on extended form design in those earlier expert levels.
However, let me show you in this lesson a couple of things I did not cover in Expert Level 4. For example, some custom form elements. I will show you how to make some cool-looking text boxes and labels that look like that. Later on, for the members in the extended cut, I will show you how to do some custom buttons. But let's take a look at how to set something like this up.
So I decided to do a little Google search, and I found some things that are kind of interesting here. For example, this look. I think that's a neat look. The question is, do you want to put this much effort into all of your fields? Now, if you have a small form with a few fields on it, sure. But if you want to create something like this, just to give you an idea, you can pretty much do anything you want in Access. It's just how much effort you want to put into it.
Back here at my customer form, there are a lot of fields on this one, but let's just do one of them and show you some ideas here. I am going to clear off a lot of this stuff because we do not need half of it. Let's just use first name and last name. Actually, I will just do first name. I am only doing one of them.
We want it to look like that other screen. So, first thing we are going to start off with is a label that looks like this. The label is going to go above it. Let's say we got a cool background color here, let's go with that purple.
Now, this brings up another idea. Access doesn't have all the cool options. If you look at this thing here, it has a gradient. Access really doesn't have that in its standard colors and stuff. But if you have any of the other Office applications, Word, PowerPoint, even Excel, you can insert objects or even screenshots of objects that can give you the look and feel you want. They didn't give it to Access. I don't know why. Access is like the red-headed stepchild of the Office family. They didn't give basic shapes that you can draw in Excel or PowerPoint.
So, let's open up Excel real quick. If you've got Word or PowerPoint or Excel, use those. All right, here's an Excel blank sheet. Go to Insert, Illustrations, Shapes. Pick a shape you want, like a rectangle. Draw it out.
Make it about the size of your form. Go to Shape Fill. You can pick a gradient or a texture. Again, I wish they would have put these features in Access, but they didn't. Let's go to the gradient and do just a simple swipe down from the top, like this one here. Oh yeah, linear down. You can change, right click, format shape. We can change the fill. We can adjust the colors. You want to get that purple at the other form head. Click on these little stops here. I haven't covered this in my Access classes because it doesn't exist in Access, but in my Excel classes, I have covered it. Pick the dark purple, and then down at the bottom, we will pick a lighter purple.
Let's do that. Actually, that looks cool. Let's go with that. I like that.
Now, how do we get this over into Access? We just copy and paste it. Click on it, copy (Control-C), then go over to Access. Click on your form and hit Control-V. Paste it in, and there is your background now.
Double-click on it and make sure up here it says "Image," because sometimes, depending on the object that you copy, it could bring it over as an actual OLE object. This says "OLE Unbound 32," but it is really a bitmap image, so don't worry about it too much. OLE objects are for old support. You can drop Word documents and Excel spreadsheets directly in your forms, and you can double-click on them and they would open up in Word, for example. But I don't recommend using them as there are a lot of problems with them. That is a whole separate lesson though.
But this should come in as an image. I am just going to rename it my background image.
Now, we have to send this to the back, right? It's a background. So right-click and then go to position, then send to back. Now it is behind everything.
I am going to take Customer ID off of here like that. Let's slide this guy up here.
Now we are trying to mimic - oops, I just moved my background image. Hang on, I'll slide it over like that. We are trying to mimic that thing right there. I don't know about the rounded borders. We could do rounded borders. You could do it with the rectangles built into Access, but they do not have rounded borders.
First thing we do is make this white under Format. I pick the standard colors. I try to stay away from the theme colors because these never change. If you change your theme, then those could change. This we need to make transparent. Double-click on it. Actually, never mind, we could do it from up here. Drop this down. We can't make it transparent. See, again, images and stuff like that in Excel confuse me because you can make those transparent there.
I believe we have to use the property sheet. Under Format, under Back Style, pick transparent. There is that. You could still give it a background color, though. The background color that you give it is what you get when you click on it.
Now, you have to go back to background transparent. See, the back color will stay in there, but watch. Let me save this now. When I come back in here, see, when you are on it, we need another field so we can tab away from it. Hold on. Design view.
We do need another field. Let's just copy this new last name. I'll put last name over here.
Data, last name.
Copy.
Paste.
Change this to last name.
Close it. Save it. Open it back up.
You will see how it looks like that.
That white is what you get when you tab to it. You could change that even though the default is transparent. If you want something slightly more subtle, now we have to click on two things to make changes. Properties.
Format.
Background color.
Back to no color. Let's see here.
Back color. Let's try to make it this ...
Well, we're going to make the text white.
So let's do that as the background color.
And let's do the foreground color.
Right here.
Foreground color is white.
There we go.
Now that we've changed the background color, we have to set this back to transparent again. Because every time you try to change this, it will change that back.
Let's close this and reopen it now and see if we got what we want.
Yeah, that's what I wanted.
Design view.
Back up again.
Yeah, see the back color went back to "no color" again. It's weird. It stays in there, but that's one of those little Access quirk bugs.
It is in there. You can see it is there when we tab to it.
Let's make the borders transparent.
Design view.
I think we can do that from up here.
As I said, I don't spend a ton of time formatting, but I do not spend a lot of time going through all these weird things. We can make transparent borders.
That should do that.
Now we have to put those little boxes around it.
The boxes, we can find those on here. There is the shape right there. Right-angle. Draw a box like so.
Right-click, positioning, send it back. Now we have to send this to back to position, send it back. Because I sent this to the back behind. You have to remember there is an image in the background of the form.
Let's see what our example looks like again.
All right, it's white.
Let's go white.
I think it already is white. Let's see. I haven't heard them clicking on it now. Okay, see, that's another thing. When you put a background image back there, it gets kind of hard to work with things because it's in the way. So we're going to slide it over there for a second.
Sometimes it is hard to grab stuff.
So, format. Shape outline is going to be - I am going to make it slightly less white. Let's make it like that color white. Actually, I am going to make this the form background darker so we can just see what we are working with.
There, that's even better. And border with hairline, solid, border color.
Let's see what this looks like. Let me slide you back into place. Let's take a peek.
OK, that's not bad.
Now, as far as this label goes, yeah, I know that's what it looks like there, but that's going to be really tricky. We have to make like a sliver of that gradient there and then put it behind the label.
I think it would look just as good if we did something like this and just put it above it like that. I think that would look just as nice. Let's see.
Of course, I will have to turn the borders and stuff off. Yeah, I think that looks good. Of course, put that back down where it belongs.
Let me move this stuff all down. Slide down, so I have some room to work here.
You can use the upper left corner to move stuff independent. Move the label independent of the text box.
There we go.
I think that looks good.
But if you want to put it all right over that border, you can. You just have to set the background color to kind of match and make it not transparent. So we'd probably put a space in front of it too, like that, and then make your background color as close to that purple as you can. There is no eyedropper in Access, which kind of stinks. Get it as close to that purple as you can, maybe there. Let's see.
That's not too bad. I like it above it. I am going to undo that. I like it above it, right there.
Let me get rid of this. It is going to be easier to recreate this a second time. Once you get one of them perfect, then copying it and just changing data sources is not that bad. In fact, I am going to take this guy and make it just slightly less white. I think that would look better as an off-gray.
There we go.
Let's take this down here. Bring the edge back in. Bring that bottom back up. Let's see what we got.
Save it. Close it. Open it up again.
That's looking better. I missed a spot over here, though.
Back to design view.
Now you got this pretty much good. Move the background out of the way. I will just use something to do last.
Copy.
Paste, paste, paste.
Then we will copy all this and paste it. Put it over here. I am not changing all the labels. You can go through and change all the labels yourself if you want.
Make it look like that. Slide this over here like so. Do one of those. Do one of these. Put a title up here if you want to make it look snazzy. Save it. Close it. Open it back up.
There you go.
What's going on over here? Let's see. It could be the record selector or the scroll bar. Let's take a look.
For this particular form, turn off the record selector. I will leave the navigation buttons on. We do not need scroll bars. Close it and see what we got now.
That's what it was. It is a little harder to see those labels in the center here where it is lighter colored. Let's switch that gradient up one more time here. Design view. Let me get rid of that. Let me slide all these up just a little bit.
Let's go back to Excel and modify this gradient. Let's get rid of that light white color in the center. Click there, drop this down, let's go dark purple. Actually, I am going to get rid of that gradient stop. Click on it and hit delete. Let's change this gradient stop to a slightly lighter purple.
Let me slide my thing down so you can see it better. Then we are going to go to that and then go to more colors, then go just slightly less dark like that.
Yeah, that's better. That is what I want. Now I am going to copy this, go back to Access, and paste that as the background.
That looks a lot better.
I had to go to special effect on the background and change it to flat, because I could not get it to look exactly the way I wanted. Right-click, position, send it back. Bring those edges in. Save it. Close it. Open it.
There we go. Looks a lot better, but different. You wanted something that looks different, so there you go. It has the same standard Access interface.
Again, if you want those rounded edges on there, do that. Excel has those. You can add that as a shape. Just go in here and insert illustrations, go to shapes, find this guy. Draw whatever you want in here as your border. Set up the shape fill: no fill. You can add the magic. If you have a gradient in your background, you have to do some matching. The outline, make it white, and you get those rounded borders like that.
I would go with this. If you are going to do all kinds of fancy stuff like this, I would go with the solid colors of your background, because that is going to be hard to match the gradient going all the way down. Or, here is another trick. You could even set this up if you know exactly what fields you want to have on your Access form.
You could even set this up as an image in here exactly as you want it with all of these. Copy, paste, paste, paste. Set these up however you want them in here. I am having a hard time. Let me move this out of the way. Now I can't see anything in the background.
Put that back. It's hard to grab these sometimes. Click, drag, put that over there. Click and drag, put that over there.
Obviously, you are going to have to save this design layer somewhere. Then take the transparent labels on here if you want to do text boxes. You can do an illustration. You could do a shape. You could do a standard text box. Just draw it right here like this.
Put first name. Make this exactly the size you want it. You get more control in here, too, because you can use the Alt key and you are not limited. In Access, you have to stick everything on that grid.
Now, I can say this fill can be transparent. Make this 100 percent transparent. You can put that over that line if you want to do that. Actually, that is not a bad idea, or set it right there. Make the text light like that.
The border has to go. Give me the border. Click OK. The line is 100 percent transparent like that.
Now set all these up the way you want them. Then screen capture with whatever screen capture tool you are using. Screen capture this, and then drop that in your Access form as your background.
Design view. Assume you do not have all this stuff. Let's move this out of the way. Paste that there. Now that is now your background. All you literally have to do is take your text boxes only, drop them where you want them.
Send this to back. Right-click, position, send to back. Get rid of the label in here because you already have a label in your design element.
Now you can have whatever fancy background you want. When you open this thing up in form view, ignore the rest, ignore this.
Now you have this. You can do whatever kind of colorful design you want and drop it as a background image. I actually kind of prefer this method. It's harder to make changes down the line because you have to save this design element in Excel, but I have done this before. I have actually used Word or PowerPoint to make backgrounds and used Excel - it's the same tools though. You can do exactly that and then drop your Photoshop (if you are a graphic designer), do whatever you want, drop it as an image in the back of your Access form.
Then all you have to do is place text boxes and other controls where you want them. If this makes your form design look less blocky, then there you go. There is one alternative: make things round. Unfortunately, these text boxes have to stay rectangular. There are some limitations.
There, I just took a second in Excel and prettied that up a little bit. Oh, we have to make this last name. There, just took a minute. Now I will screen capture this. Again, HyperSnap or a good program - I have been using it for years. You can select exactly what you want on the screen just like that. There are all kinds of screen capture tools in Windows and in Office, too, but I prefer HyperSnap. It's just what I have been using for years. It's so much easier.
I am going to delete this guy. Let's go design view. Leave that there. I am going to get rid of this. Actually, let's get rid of all of this stuff. No longer needed. Let's paste in my background.
Right-click, position, send to back, slide you up there. Line up my first name. I am going to put it over to the right just a little bit. Like there.
Copy paste.
Copy paste paste.
All right, first name. This will be next in the tab order, so I want you down here. Then you, then you.
It might take you some time if you are doing your design in another program, like Photoshop or Word or whatever, because you have to make sure these things line up right with the grid.
Now you could change the grid elements too. If you want to completely get rid of the grid, I wouldn't get rid of it completely. But if this is too granular for you, go to your form properties.
Where is it? I hardly ever change it, but it is under - I'll just go to all - grid x grid y. 24 is the default. Jack it up to 100 if you want.
Sorry, it is 1 through 64. See, I never change these, so I hardly ever use them. I did not know what the max is.
Now it looks like you have no grid. It is still there, it is just extremely granular. Now you can move this pretty much anywhere you want in here.
That might be too granular. Let's go to 48. I got it, I lost them. All of them. Come back. 48. Even then, you probably are not going to see dots, but it is still closer.
Yeah, that's better. You do not want to design this nice cool interface and then you can't get things to line up, so just jack that up to 64. That's how many dots per inch you get. Go back to that background image. Set it to flat. It just looks better. Get rid of that, and get rid of this. Save it. Change these. Right, there is last name. I am not going to rename them. Change the control sources. City. State. Good enough.
Of course, I only did these four fields. Boom. Look at that. Much less blocky and it looks really cool.
So there you go. There is your not blocky, pretty cool-looking Access form. It all depends on how much time you want to spend on developing that background. The controls are pretty much set. You can change the fonts and all that stuff.
If you want to learn more about form design aesthetics, like colored buttons and those raised option groups, I cover a lot more of that in my Access Expert Level 4 class. I will put a link below the video.
Members, I have some extra stuff for you. I am going to show you how to create enhanced buttons. I will show you how to put custom images on your buttons. That's not too hard. Then I will show you how to make your own buttons using PNG images. The benefit of using PNG is that, like GIFs, you can make transparent backgrounds so these corners, these segments around the button image, will be transparent.
Then, using your own button, you will make three slightly different versions of the button, so when you hover over it, you get those hover effects, like the extended Access buttons will do when you hover over them. There are settings for that. I will show you that. Those aren't that hard.
Then I will teach you how to make three slightly different versions of your button. We will save those as images, put them in our form, so when we hover over the form, we get that hover effect. When we click on it, you can see we get that click effect, too. It will stay like that until we move off the button. See? It's kind of neat. It opens up the form. Click. That's it. That's custom button design.
You can use these too. These do not look anywhere near as neat, but you can do it. I am not a graphic designer, and I just threw this together in about five minutes, so if you are big into Photoshop or any other kind of graphic design, you can make whatever cool-looking buttons you want.
As you can see, it did not take me long to throw that together in a few minutes. Then we will learn some VBA code to do the mouse hover effects with VBA code, and then I will teach you about On Move events.
How do you become a member? Click on that join button down below the video. You'll have access to my extended cut videos, all my Silver Members and up. I also do live video and chat sessions, and there are other perks as well. You'll see the list of perks if you click on the join button.
Of course, the free TechHelp videos just like this one will keep coming. I will keep making them as long as you keep watching them. If you liked this video, please hit the like button. Leave a little thumbs up and share it if you think anybody in your circle will find this video interesting.
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Make sure you check down below, hit the Show More button. YouTube does a good job of hiding it, but it is down there. You'll find links to other videos and other things of information that are useful and related to this.
If you have not yet checked out my free Access Level 1 class, watch it. I cover a lot of design tricks in there, too. It's three hours long. If you are new to Access, I strongly recommend it. If you like Level 1, Level 2 is just a dollar, and that's also free for my members.
If you would like to see your question answered in a video like this one, visit my TechHelp page. There is the address. I will put a link below. Also make sure to check out the forums on my website. This is where Genet posted today's question.
Thank you very much for watching. I hope you learned something, and we will see you next time.Quiz Q1. What is the main focus of this lesson regarding Microsoft Access forms?
A. Integrating VBA code for data processing
B. Customizing and improving form appearance and aesthetics
C. Automating data imports from Excel
D. Securing database access with user permissions
Q2. Why does the instructor recommend using Excel, Word, or PowerPoint for designing form backgrounds?
A. They are better at handling database relationships
B. These Office apps offer more advanced shape and gradient tools not found in Access
C. Access does not support any kind of image insertion
D. These apps are required to run Access forms
Q3. What is a limitation of using custom graphics as backgrounds in Access forms?
A. You cannot add any text boxes over a graphic image
B. It is harder to make changes later, as you would need to edit the graphic and re-import it
C. They are not compatible with Access 2019 or newer
D. Access will automatically stretch images to fit all controls
Q4. According to the lesson, what is a recommended approach when setting up multiple styled fields on a form?
A. Redesign each field from scratch every time
B. Perfect one styled element, then copy and adjust it for other fields
C. Add all fields first, then change backgrounds at the end
D. Only use default Access field styles to avoid errors
Q5. What is a known limitation of Access's built-in design tools compared to Excel or PowerPoint?
A. Inability to insert basic shapes
B. Limited support for gradients, rounded borders, and advanced shapes
C. No ability to add text boxes
D. Cannot apply any color to form elements
Q6. What happens when you set the grid density to a high value (such as 64) in Access form design?
A. The grid becomes more visible, making it easier to align controls
B. It removes all alignment restrictions for controls
C. The grid becomes extremely granular, allowing for more precise placement
D. It locks all controls in place permanently
Q7. When customizing buttons with your own images in Access, what image format is highlighted as preferred, especially for transparent corners?
A. JPEG
B. BMP
C. PNG
D. TIFF
Q8. What technique was demonstrated to achieve hover effects on buttons in Access?
A. Using built-in Access animations
B. Applying a macro for format change
C. Creating multiple image versions for each button state and handling changes with VBA code
D. Relying on standard Windows button effects
Q9. What is the instructor's opinion about balancing design aesthetics and functionality in Access forms?
A. Aesthetics should always come before functionality
B. Functionality is most important, but a good appearance is still valuable if time allows
C. Only default styles should ever be used
D. Form design does not matter for users
Q10. Which of the following is NOT suggested as a tool to capture screen images when designing background graphics for Access forms?
A. HyperSnap
B. Windows built-in snipping tool
C. Microsoft Paint
D. Custom-built Access export tool
Answers: 1-B; 2-B; 3-B; 4-B; 5-B; 6-C; 7-C; 8-C; 9-B; 10-D
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 video from Access Learning Zone focuses on form design aesthetics and ways to improve the look of your forms and buttons in Microsoft Access. I often receive questions about making forms look less blocky and more visually appealing, especially from developers who are interested in taking their designs beyond the basics. Typically, my main concern has always been usability and function, but there is definitely room to enhance your forms with a nicer appearance as well.
For those who have never explored this topic, there are several things you can do to customize the look of your Access forms. In my earlier classes, like Access Expert Level 4, I covered topics such as using colored buttons and customizing option groups. Many students skip these earlier classes and miss out on useful form design techniques, so if you are looking for a resource to improve your form aesthetics, I recommend visiting those early expert levels.
In this lesson, I want to show you a few ways to go even further and create some custom form elements and backgrounds that I did not specifically cover before. For example, you may want labels and text boxes to have a modern appearance, with gradients and custom borders. Unfortunately, Access does not natively offer advanced design features like gradients or easily created rounded borders. However, using other Office applications such as Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, you can create visually attractive elements and then bring them into your Access form.
To illustrate, if you want to create a gradient background for a section of your form, you can do so quickly in Excel by inserting a rectangle shape, applying a gradient fill with the colors you want, and then copying that shape as an image. You simply paste the image as a background in your Access form, send it behind your fields, and set up your controls in front of it. While working with images like this, Access will sometimes import an OLE object, but for these purposes, it will work just fine as a background image.
When adjusting your fields and controls for the new design, you might need to set backgrounds and borders to transparent or match them to your image. Access has some quirks with things like background colors and transparency, so it can take a bit of trial and error to get things looking just right. You may also find it helpful to toggle elements like scroll bars or record selectors in your form properties to better display your customizations.
If you want to add visual separation or borders around your fields, you can use the shape tools in Access or, for more flexibility, create them in Excel with features like rounded corners that Access does not have. Once you are satisfied with the appearance, copy the design and bring it over to Access. If you need to design entire sections of your form—say, laying out all the fields with custom visual backgrounds—you can create the whole layout as an image (using Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or even a graphics program like Photoshop), capture a screenshot, and use that as a form background in Access. This gives you nearly unlimited design options, though you need to ensure your Access controls align neatly with your imported design.
One thing to keep in mind is that changes to your design later on might take more work, since you would need to update your design in the original program (Excel, for example) and re-import the background image. But for a polished, less boxy look, this is a great method, and it can make your applications look much more professional and modern.
There are a few limitations to keep in mind. Most notably, Access forms and controls are fundamentally rectangular, so achieving certain effects like full rounded fields may not be possible without more graphics work.
For those wanting to go even further, in today's Extended Cut, I cover how to create enhanced custom buttons, including using your own images as button backgrounds with PNG files for transparency. I also show how to set up hover effects so your buttons respond visually when you mouse over them, as well as how to handle click events and different button states using code and form events. If you are interested in adding another level of visual polish and interactivity to your Access forms, you will find that helpful.
If you want even more tips about design aesthetics like colored buttons and raised option groups, I recommend checking out Access Expert Level 4 for step-by-step guidance.
For more complete, step-by-step instructions on everything discussed in this video, please visit my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.Topic List Form design aesthetics in Microsoft Access
Customizing form field appearance
Using background images from Excel in Access forms
Creating gradient backgrounds for forms
Inserting and formatting shapes in Excel for Access use
Copying shapes and images from Excel to Access
Layering and positioning form elements
Making text box and label backgrounds transparent
Setting border and background colors for fields
Managing label placement and formatting
Adjusting grid settings for precise element placement
Screen capturing custom designs for form backgrounds
Aligning controls with custom backgrounds
Handling Access limitations for rounded borders
Alternatives for designing non-rectangular elements
Using third-party tools like HyperSnap for screen capture
Organizing and layering objects in form design
Tips for less blocky, modern-looking forms
Troubleshooting issues with images and controls in forms |
