Visit our new web pages

We have launched a new extended set of web pages at www.alvechurchdata.co.uk. These old pages will stay on the server because people still have links to them but they will not be updated.

The new version of this page is at www.alvechurchdata.co.uk/hints-and-tips/acccentre.html.

Centre controls on the screen

Your Access forms might be running on all sorts of different computers with different sizes of screen. The controls might look good when you design the form but they'll all be crowded on the left-hand side if the user maximises the form on a larger screen.

The code below is my solution. I've kept it simple by restricting the user's choices:

• The form always runs maximised.
• The user can't minimize or resize the form.
• Controls stay the same size.
• Controls are only centred horizontally.

Put this code in the form's Open method:

Set the following properties:

• Dividing Lines = No.
• Border Style = None.
• Min Max buttons = No.

You end up with a form that looks like this:

alt='[Controls centred in screen]'>

Problems

A better solution would be to write much more code to move and resize the controls as the user changes the size of the form. This gets difficult because some controls (like textboxes) must stay the same height whereas others (like listboxes) must get larger as the form gets taller. Restricting myself to horizontal movement kept it simple.

If the form includes containers like Tabbed Controls or Option Groups then you'll need to add extra code to handle them. Use the ControlType property inside the loop to detect these controls.