Arrange Tabular
By Richard Rost
5 years ago
Use Tabular Layout to Quickly Arrange Form Fields
In today's video, I will show you how to quickly add and arrange fields to your continuous forms using the Tabular option on the Arrange menu item in your Microsoft Access databases.
Richard from Fort Myers, Florida (that's ME) said, in one of my videos: I gotta come up with a way to set up the fields in my continuous forms quickly and easily.
Scott from Colorado Springs, Colorado (a Gold Member) replied: Add the fields you want to the form. Select all of the fields and click on Arrange, Tabular. Resize them however you want. Click Remove Layout.
Members
I'll show you more form layout options including how to work with rows and columns, how to move fields around, insert columns, work with Layout View, and how to use it to arrange labels over the tops of listbox columns.
Silver Members and up get access to view Extended Cut videos, when available. Gold Members can download the files from class plus get access to the Code Vault. If you're not a member, Join Today!
 Links
Scott's Original Tip: https://599cd.com/a?27410
Continuous Forms: https://599cd.com/Continuous
Intro
In this video, I will show you a faster way to arrange fields in your continuous forms using the Arrange Tabular option in Microsoft Access. You'll see how to add fields, quickly organize them into a tabular layout, remove extra padding, and separate them from the layout group for easier customization. This tip helps streamline designing continuous forms and can save a lot of time compared to doing everything manually.
Transcript
In today's video, we're going to learn a quick method for arranging the fields in your continuous forms using the tabular option. When I say we, I mean all of us.
Today's problem was brought up by me in one of my videos. I said I have to come up with a way to set up the fields in my continuous forms quickly and easily. I just happened to mention this in one of my videos. I've been doing it old school for 20-some years, and the method I've been using is actually kind of slow.
One of my Gold members, Scott from Colorado Springs, Colorado, said, "Add the fields you want to the form, select all the fields, and click Arrange Tabular. Resize them however you want, then click Remove Layout."
I've got to say, Scott, thank you. This is an amazing solution.
I remember when layout view and the whole arrange options came about. I think it was around Access 2007 or 2010, probably 2007 when they did the whole ribbon redesign.
I had been, at that point, using Access for, I don't know how many years; 1994 is when I started using Access. So I was kind of set in my old ways of doing stuff manually in design view. When I started playing with the layout view and the different arrange options, I didn't like them. They were difficult, actually broke some of my code, and the formatting options were horrible. So I kind of stopped playing with them at that point.
For the past, I don't know, 10 to 13 years, I really haven't played with them much. I covered them a little bit in my classes, but I haven't really used them myself or appreciated little tricks like this.
Let me show the rest of the people. Here we are on a copy of my TechHelp Free Template. You can download this off my website if you'd like to. It's a free download. You'll find a link down below.
In here, I've got a customer list. This is a continuous form. If you don't know what continuous forms are, go watch my video on continuous forms. Again, link down below.
The problem we have here is when I build a new continuous form, the method that I'm using has been a little old school and slow. I've got a template right here, continuous F. Let's copy this, copy and paste, and we'll just call this new continuous F.
Go to design view. I've got it set up with my options and some colors. I've got it set to continuous forms. This is covered in the video where I build the TechHelp Free Template. Go watch that if you want to see how I built this.
Let me show you the method I've been using. Let's just delete what's in here right now.
First thing is you have to bind the form to wherever it's getting its data from, either a table or a query. You have to do this either way. So, record source, let's just pick customer T, the customer table.
Now we can go to Add Existing Fields, bring in the fields that you want. You can select them all, or I'll just bring in a couple of them. Let's bring these ones in here. I click the first one, hold the Shift key down, click the last one, drag them, and drop them over here.
This is where Scott's tip kicks in. What I've been doing is I cut off the labels, snip, paste them in the form header like this, arrange them however you want. This is a bit of a manual process getting them lined up. This is where I said I need to come up with a way to do this nice and quick because this is time-consuming.
Slide that up, then you get to do the same thing with the text boxes. Drag them over here, resize, drag this over here, resize. Now I left zip code down there, so bring that up here, do that. Oh, this is a field. See, these are even attached. Bring one over the other, they're attached. So, you've got to cut it out, paste it up here, then slide it over there.
You have to get these aligned just right, move these over here like this. As you can see, it's clunky. You can get the best results, but I still don't like the full layout view when Access builds this for you.
Under the form design, I like doing this by hand. But Scott's tool makes this process a whole lot easier than this.
Let me show you what Scott said to do. Let me close or actually just delete this stuff. We don't need this stuff here.
Now here's Scott's trick. Instead of bringing in the fields and doing all the manual movement, watch this. Add fields, same thing. Click, shift-click, bring in the fields, leave them right there. Turn that off. Now, with these guys all still highlighted, go to Arrange, and then over here in the Table section, pick Tabular.
Look at that. This arranged them for me just the way I wanted them to be. The labels up top, the text boxes down here next to each other. Access put them all in a layout group. You can see there's the group right there. You can click on that and drag the whole group if you want to. If you want to change an individual field, you can click on it, like First Name. You can resize it, and it'll also resize the table and slide these guys over next to it.
See Customer ID? Let's resize that. I missed it. Click, and then right there. That doesn't have to be that big. First Name, Last Name, and Email can be larger. Address can be larger, say, like that.
One thing I'm going to add, Scott, that you didn't have in your instructions (which were very nice, by the way), is that I don't like these huge gaps between the controls. What I'm going to do is pick the whole group, come over here to control padding, and then pick None. That gets rid of all the space between the groups like that. That looks very nice.
Now, once you're done arranging these guys the way you want them, click on the whole group like that, and then pick Remove Layout.
Now you're back to where I like to be, where these are all free-standing objects. So I can slide them up like that. I can resize these individually. I can select these guys, move them up in the corner like that. Now I don't have them in a layout group. I don't like keeping them in a layout group. I've had problems with that before. I don't know if those problems are gone. I'll have to do a little more playing with this.
I just noticed Scott posted this comment in my forums. I wanted my class to see this morning. I'm like, wow, that's really cool. I remember seeing this years and years and years ago, but I was like, no, I don't like it. I was playing with some forms and doing some other stuff, and when you switch between layout view and design view and you're going back and forth, especially once you get VB code in there, you have to be very, very careful.
I will never put layout view on a form that already has programming in it. But making a brand new form like this, this is a fantastic technique.
Thanks, Scott. I love it when you guys teach me something. I love when my students teach me something back. That's amazing. I love to learn stuff, too. I'm constantly trying to learn new tips and tricks.
In fact, when I get someone who asks me a question that I make these videos out of, oftentimes I'll go do some extra research. I'll go Google it and see what other people might have come up with about that. Sometimes I'll put that stuff in the video.
So I love learning stuff, and I really appreciate it when you guys send me your tips.
Now I can save this, close it, and when I open up new continuous form, look at that. Looks like that. Beautiful. Perfect. That will probably cut my time designing continuous forms in half. I'm going to use that, Scott. Thank you very much.
Want to learn more in the extended cut? I'm going to show you more about that layout on your forms. We'll talk about using rows and columns, inserting rows and columns, inserting to the left, to the right, and moving the fields around inside the layout. Then I'll take you into actual layout view, which I'm not a huge fan of. One of the things I do like is that you can use it to arrange labels over the columns in a list box. It's kind of hard to do that in design view because you can't see the data, but if you switch to layout view, you can actually move and resize those labels above the list box. That's a trick I'll show you in the extended cut for members.
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Quiz
Q1. What is the benefit of using the Tabular option in the Arrange menu when designing continuous forms in Access?
A. It quickly aligns fields and labels for you, saving time compared to manual arrangement
B. It automatically writes VBA code for your form
C. It adds conditional formatting to the fields
D. It creates a summary report from your form data
Q2. According to the video, what is the first step when creating a new continuous form?
A. Add conditional formatting to all fields
B. Bind the form to a table or query as its record source
C. Save the form with a new name
D. Apply the Remove Layout command
Q3. Why does the instructor prefer to remove the layout group after arranging the fields?
A. Removing the layout group allows individual resizing and positioning of controls
B. It improves database security
C. It enables automatic sorting of data
D. It adds colors and formatting
Q4. What problem did the instructor experience with layout view and arrange options when they were first introduced?
A. They sometimes broke existing code and had limited formatting options
B. They made exporting to Excel impossible
C. They were only available in Access 2003
D. They made queries run slower
Q5. What helpful step did the instructor add to Scott's suggested process that was not in the original tip?
A. Change control padding to None to reduce space between fields
B. Sort the fields alphabetically
C. Add conditional formatting to the group
D. Embed a macro for form automation
Q6. Which view does the instructor recommend avoiding once you have programming (VBA code) in your form?
A. Layout View
B. Report View
C. Datasheet View
D. Print Preview
Q7. After removing the layout, what is one advantage the instructor mentions?
A. Controls can be freely moved and resized without affecting others
B. All fields become read-only
C. The data source is automatically updated
D. Macros are automatically enabled
Q8. What additional feature is highlighted in the video's extended cut for members?
A. Using layout view to arrange labels above columns in a list box
B. Sending email notifications from Access
C. Applying password protection to forms
D. Exporting forms to PDF
Q9. How does the instructor suggest members can access extended cut videos and extra resources?
A. By joining at the Silver level or higher on the membership page
B. By subscribing to the YouTube mailing list only
C. By signing up for Access Level 1 for free
D. By emailing support directly
Q10. What is the main reason the instructor is now favoring Scott's method over their old approach?
A. It is much faster and easier to arrange fields in continuous forms
B. It provides enhanced security settings
C. It allows users to sort data directly in design view
D. It enables multiple database connections
Answers: 1-A; 2-B; 3-A; 4-A; 5-A; 6-A; 7-A; 8-A; 9-A; 10-A
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 is all about a faster way to arrange fields in your continuous forms using the tabular layout. I brought up this issue myself in a previous video, mentioning that I needed a quicker, easier method to set up fields on continuous forms. For years, I've used the same manual approach, which is time-consuming.
One of my Gold members, Scott, provided a fantastic tip: after you add the fields you want to the form, select them all and apply the Tabular layout from the Arrange menu. Then you can resize the fields as needed and remove the layout grouping. This is much more efficient than the old-fashioned manual method.
Let me give a bit of background. Layout view and the Arrange options were introduced around Access 2007 with the ribbon redesign. By that point, I'd already been working with Access for over a decade and had developed my own manual processes in design view. Back then, I found the new features clunky, sometimes problematic for existing code, and limited in formatting. So for many years, I've only briefly touched on these options in class but didn't use them in my own projects or really see the hidden value in some of these newer tricks.
Now, let me walk through how I've done this in the past. I have a continuous form in my TechHelp Free Template. If you've never worked with continuous forms, you can watch my lesson on them. My method involved manually binding the form to its record source, like a table or query, dragging in the fields, moving and resizing everything one field at a time, and cutting and pasting labels into the header to get things to line up the way I want. This process was not only slow but also required lots of little manual adjustments, especially if fields were attached to labels.
Scott's method is a real time-saver. Instead of dragging everything around manually, you start by adding your existing fields to the form. With all fields highlighted, use the Arrange ribbon's Tabular option. This instantly lays out the labels at the top and the text boxes neatly in a row underneath. Everything gets grouped together, making it easy to resize fields as needed. Select the group and reduce the control padding to None for a cleaner result with no extra space between controls.
Once things look the way you want, select the group and choose Remove Layout. This unlinks the controls so you can fine-tune their placement individually, just like in old-school design view. I still avoid keeping forms in a layout group, as that used to cause issues with forms containing VBA code, but for creating new continuous forms, this tip is outstanding. It will definitely cut down the amount of time I spend setting these up.
I want to thank Scott for sharing this tip with the class. It's great to learn new things from students. Whenever a question comes up that leads to a tip like this, I often do extra research to see if others have similar solutions, and I always appreciate when people send in their own methods.
Saving and opening the new form, the end result looks clean and professional, and the process is much faster. This approach will definitely save me a significant amount of setup time going forward.
If you'd like to learn even more, in today's Extended Cut, I will go over additional layout options for forms, such as using rows and columns, how to insert new rows and columns, rearranging fields, and working directly in layout view. I'll also explain how layout view makes it easier to adjust label positions for list boxes, which is tricky in design view because you can't see the actual data. That is a helpful trick I'll demonstrate for channel members in the extended cut.
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Topic List
Arranging fields in Access continuous forms using tabular layout
Selecting multiple fields for form design
Binding a form to a table as the record source
Adding existing fields to an Access form
Using the Arrange Tabular option for field layout
Resizing controls in tabular layouts
Adjusting control padding to remove spacing
Removing layout grouping from controls
Finalizing form design with free-standing objects
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