Transparent Buttons
By Richard Rost
3 years ago
Enhance Your Forms with Transparent Buttons
In today's Microsoft Access tutorial, I'm going to teach you how to make transparent buttons that you can use to put over other things in your forms, like images and controls, and do lots of cool, fun things.
Benjamin from Muskego, Wisconsin (a Platinum Member) asks: I have designed a nice, pretty main menu as an image using Photoshop. I want to use this for my database's Main Menu, and I've drawn the buttons into the image. However, I don't know how to make them clickable. Is there any way you can show me how to achieve this without programming? I love Access, but I don't want to be a programmer and I don't want to invest time in learning VBA.
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Keywords
access 2016, access 2019, access 2021, access 365, microsoft access, ms access, ms access tutorial, #msaccess, #microsoftaccess, #help, #howto, #tutorial, #learn, #lesson, #training, #database, Position Send to Back, enhance forms, transparent buttons, make transparent buttons, form navigation, hidden buttons
Intro In this video, I will show you how to enhance your Microsoft Access forms by creating transparent buttons that sit over a custom menu image. You will learn how to use the button wizard to add functional, clickable areas to your main menu without any programming or VBA code. I will demonstrate how to add your background image, place transparent buttons over it to open forms, and adjust the design for a professional look. This tutorial is perfect for beginners who want to create interactive main menus in Microsoft Access.Transcript Today we have one for the beginners. I am going to show you how to enhance your Microsoft Access forms with transparent buttons. Today's question comes from Benjamin in Muskego, Wisconsin, one of my platinum members.
Benjamin says: I have designed a nice, pretty main menu as an image using Photoshop. I want to use this for my database's main menu and I have drawn the buttons into the image. However, I do not know how to make them clickable. Is there a way you can show me how to achieve this without programming? I love Access but I do not want to be a programmer and I do not want to invest the time in learning VBA.
That is not a problem, Benjamin. You can, and I say this all the time, make fantastic databases without learning a single line of VBA code. There are button wizards that will do a lot for you and that is what I am going to show you how to do today. We can use one of those buttons to open a form, open a report, run a query, and then we can make it transparent and put it over your image. Then you can still click on it and the user will just think that they are clicking on a button in the image.
Let me show you how to do it.
Benjamin sent me some of his images and he does some really nice work. He is a graphic designer, in fact, but he said they are proprietary and he does not really want them in the video. That is fine.
So I went to ChatGPT, and ChatGPT can now create images. You tell it what you want: make me a nice, pretty, artistic main menu, blah, blah, blah. So I just threw something together. It gave me some cool stuff.
Check this out. That is neat looking, right? Or this one? You can do this kind of stuff in Photoshop too. I am going to choose this one, this futuristic Star Trek looking thing. So just save this to your drive or screen capture, whatever you want to do. I will screen capture it.
Now it is on my clipboard and let's go over to Access.
Before we get started, though, one prerequisite for today: if you have not yet watched my Access Beginner Level 1 class, go watch it. I know it is about four hours long, but it covers all the basics including how to use some buttons. Go watch this first.
We are not going to do any programming today or anything crazy. Also, go watch my blank template video. I cover how to build this main menu and a couple of basic forms in there. Go watch both of those. They are on my website. They are on my YouTube channel. Go watch them and come on back.
Here I am in my TechHelp free template. This is a free database. You can download it on my website if you want to. I am going to go into design view on my main menu. We are going to get rid of pretty much all of this stuff up here. Come over here in the ruler, click, drag, and drop right to about there.
We are going to leave the status box and my logo, of course, on the bottom. We are not going to get rid of this. Never get rid of this.
I already copied that image to my clipboard using my screen grab utility. So I am just going to hit paste and there it is. It comes right in. I am going to minimize the ribbon a little bit so I can see this thing because it is a little bit big. You can resize and rescale this stuff too if you want to.
In fact, I think I am going to undo that. I am going to scale it in my software so it fits in the window here. Like I said, I use Hypersnap. It is an older application, but it has been around forever. I am going to scale it down to about 80 percent of its size. Let's go in here and put 80 and then apply and that looks good. That is a good size.
Now we will copy it, Ctrl C, and then we will come back in here and paste it. That is much better. Looks good.
Now I want to send this image so it is behind everything else because I have some other stuff on here. I am going to right click, go to position, and then send to back. That will put it behind everything else.
Now see, here is one thing that happens sometimes. Notice how I have selected this image, and even though it is behind stuff, if I try to click on this stuff, it is not leaving the selection of that image. So you have to click over here off of it. I know, it is a quirk in Access. Note to the development team: fix that.
Now I can click on these guys and move them where I want. I will put you down here. We will put you over here. To match the motif, let us go with the black background and maybe white text. That is our status box. I cover that in some other lessons.
Now this and let us say this are going to be buttons and you can make buttons over whatever you want, but let us say these are our buttons.
Now I am going to use the form wizard and create a button that I am going to use to open, let us say, the customer form.
So, form design. Go to your command button. Make sure your wizards are on, by the way. Right here, use control wizards. Make sure that is on. If you go to create a button and nothing happens, your wizards are off. Usually, on my development machine, I leave the wizards off because I do not use them. But for my teaching machine, this one, I do leave them on for you.
So, pick the command button or just "button." Drop it anywhere you want, like there. The wizard starts up. There is tons and tons of stuff in here. I cover these in my full courses. For today, we are going to go to "Form Operations - Open a Form." Next.
What form do you want to open? Let us open the customer form. Next.
Open the form and find specific data to display or show all the records? We will just show all the records for now. I am just going to put a text message on here, but we are not going to see it anyway. But in design mode, you will see this: "Open Customers." Hit Next.
Give it a name. "OpenCustomerBTN" for button. Then Finish.
There is my open customers button. Now I am going to drag it so that it covers that entire thing right there. If the user clicks anywhere in here, it is going to click that button.
Now if I save the form and close it and open it back up again, I have a button right here to open my main menu, or it is right there, MainMenuF. There is the button. I can click on it and there is my customer form.
But I do not want to see this button here. I want to use the image behind it. So we are going to make that button transparent.
Right click on it. Open the properties. That brings up the property sheet. Find "Transparent" right there. We are going to set Transparent to Yes and it appears to disappear. Look at that. It appears to disappear.
Save it. Close it. Open it back up again. Now I can click on "Add Customer." Boop. There it is. That is pushing that button.
Want to do something else? Come in here, design view. Go back here. Make a button. Drop it over here. What do you want to do this time? I do not know. Let us open a different form. Open, let us open up the customer list, F. Next. Finish.
Then take this and go like that and open up its properties and go Transparent. Now you have two buttons on there. Close it. Save it. Open it. Click over here. Boom. Then click on the test. See that?
That is how you use transparent buttons. They are pretty cool.
If you want to learn more about this cool form stuff, including more with transparent buttons and making a custom main menu, continuous forms, all this kind of stuff, it is in my Access Beginner Level 7 class. You will find that on my website. I will put a link to it down below. All kinds of cool stuff in here.
Neat form design, main menu tricks, all kinds of stuff.
That is going to be your TechHelp video for today. I hope you learned something. Live long and prosper, my friends. I will see you next time.Quiz Q1. What is the main goal of the tutorial described in the video?
A. To teach how to write VBA code for custom menu actions
B. To create clickable areas on an image using transparent buttons in Access
C. To design graphic images for Access forms in Photoshop
D. To use macros for automating reports in Access
Q2. Which skill is NOT required for the method described in the video?
A. Basic familiarity with Microsoft Access forms
B. Knowledge of the Access button wizards
C. Hands-on experience with VBA programming
D. Ability to use images as form backgrounds
Q3. What is the primary function of the transparent button technique taught in the tutorial?
A. To hide data fields behind images
B. To make portions of an image clickable for navigation or actions
C. To merge multiple forms into a single window
D. To import Photoshop layers into Access
Q4. What tool does the instructor use to scale down the menu image before pasting it into Access?
A. Microsoft Paint
B. Paint.NET
C. Hypersnap
D. GIMP
Q5. What is the FIRST step suggested before starting to enhance the form with a transparent button?
A. Write VBA code to manage form events
B. Watch beginner-level Access tutorials to understand the basics
C. Create macros for all form buttons
D. Design custom icons for each button in Photoshop
Q6. What feature must be enabled in Access to use the button creation wizard effectively?
A. Macros
B. Control Wizards
C. Visual Basic Editor
D. Linked Tables Manager
Q7. After placing an image as a background in Access, what must the user do to make sure other controls are clickable?
A. Delete and reinsert all other controls
B. Use 'Send to Back' on the image to move it behind other controls
C. Place new controls outside the image area
D. Hide the image until controls are set up
Q8. When creating a button with the wizard, what is an example of an action you can assign to the button?
A. Closing Microsoft Access entirely
B. Minimizing the Windows desktop
C. Opening a specific form, like a customer list
D. Sending an email notification
Q9. How does the instructor recommend making the button invisible on the form while keeping it functional?
A. Change the button's border color to white
B. Cover the button with another image control
C. Set the button's Transparent property to Yes
D. Delete the button's label text
Q10. What is a benefit of using transparent buttons on a main menu image in Access?
A. They eliminate the need for all underlying macros
B. They allow users to interact with menu areas as if they are buttons in the image
C. They convert reports to editable forms automatically
D. They force users to use keyboard navigation only
Answers: 1-B; 2-C; 3-B; 4-C; 5-B; 6-B; 7-B; 8-C; 9-C; 10-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 is designed for beginners who want to add some extra polish to their Microsoft Access forms by incorporating transparent buttons.
Benjamin wrote in with an interesting question. He is a graphic designer who created a visually appealing main menu image in Photoshop, complete with custom-drawn buttons. Now, he wants to use this image as his database's main menu in Access, but he is unsure how to make those image-based buttons clickable. Benjamin prefers not to get into programming or VBA, so he was looking for a simpler, code-free solution.
The great news is that you do not need to know any VBA to achieve this. Access provides button wizards that let you add functionality like opening forms, reports, or queries, all with just a few clicks. You can place a button directly over any part of your main menu image, turn the button transparent, and the end user will click where it looks like a button in your image, never realizing the magic behind the scenes.
To illustrate, I gathered a sample main menu image. While Benjamin shared some of his designs, he preferred not to have them shown publicly. Instead, I generated an example menu using AI tools, but you could just as easily create yours in Photoshop or any other graphic editor.
To set this up, you start by saving or capturing your custom menu image and then move into Access. If you have not already done so, I highly recommend watching my Access Beginner Level 1 class and my blank template walkthrough. These resources will give you a solid foundation on building basic main menus and forms.
Once inside the Access database, switch to design view on your main menu form. You might want to clear out the existing controls at the top but keep important elements like the status box and your logo at the bottom. They add a professional touch.
With your menu image on the clipboard, simply paste it onto the form. You can use graphics utilities like Hypersnap or your preferred application to resize the image as needed before pasting, so it fits nicely within your form window.
After placing the image, you will want to send it to the back so it sits behind all other form controls. Be aware of a small Access quirk: sometimes the image remains selected, which can interfere with selecting other controls, so click off the image to deselect it before moving on.
Once your image is set, decide which areas represent your buttons. Now, using the Command Button wizard (make sure wizards are enabled), add a new button to the form and place it over your first button area. The wizard will prompt you to select the action you want, such as opening a specific form like the customer form. After going through the wizard, give the button a logical name so you know what it is for.
Resize and position the button so it covers the exact area on your image where you want the clickable spot. However, the default appearance will be an actual button, which does not blend well with your image. Here is where the magic happens: simply set the button's 'Transparent' property to Yes in the property sheet. The button will now be invisible to the end user, but it remains fully functional. If anyone clicks the spot on the form where the button is placed, the assigned action will fire.
You can repeat this process for additional clickable areas, placing as many transparent buttons as your menu requires, each configured to perform a different task.
Transparent buttons are an excellent way to blend the usability of Access with custom visual designs, giving your users a seamless and professional experience.
If you are interested in learning more advanced techniques with forms, transparent buttons, custom main menus, and continuous form layouts, all these topics are covered in detail in my Access Beginner Level 7 class, available on my website.
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 Importing a custom background image into an Access form
Resizing and scaling images for form backgrounds
Sending an image to the back layer of a form
Using the command button wizard to create buttons
Configuring buttons to open specific forms
Naming command buttons in the property sheet
Positioning command buttons over image-based menu areas
Making command buttons transparent
Testing transparent buttons on main menu forms |
