Access is designed to provide database developers with a lot of flexibility. Part of this flexibility is having different types of objects that carry out quite specific functions. For instance, tables contain structured data, queries allow the user to work with that data, forms present your data and help you to automate database navigation and functions, and reports gather your data for printing.

Controls are graphical objects that a database developer places on a form or report. Controls can display data, perform actions specified by the user, or even help enhance the appearance of the database front-end. In fact, all information on forms or reports is contained in controls. Because there are many different controls that can do many different things, controls add to the flexibility of Microsoft Access.

Forms and Reports often draw information from Tables or Queries by linking (or binding) controls to fields in an underlying table or query. Yet controls do not have to be bound. Thus, there are three basic types of controls in Access: unbound, bound, and calculated, which is an advanced form of binding.

The Toolbox is a special kind of toolbar that appears only in Design View and contains icons that allow you to select the type of control or tool that best suits your needs. If the toolbox is not visible in Design View, you can activate it by selecting Toolbox from the View menu, or by selecting the Toolbox icon on the toolbar:

You can deactivate the toolbox the same way. Controls are created when the user presses one of the icons on the toolbox (each of which represents a different control) and then drags the cursor or clicks the mouse on the form or report body.

After creating a control, you can manipulate its properties through the Properties window. To access the Properties window, select Properties from the View menu item on the toolbar, or select the Properties icon also on the toolbar:

The Properties Window contains all the property information for each control in the form or report. This includes the control's name, position on the screen, color, size, event properties, and data source properties. To access a control's properties, the user must make sure that the Properties Window is open and then select a control on the form or report. That control's properties will then appear in the Properties Window. A control's properties may be viewed or changed in the Properties Window. Below is a Properties Window for a text box (called "lastName"), which is a kind of control:

Notice that the tab All is selected. This means that all the control's properties are listed. The other tabs organize properties by function: Format contains all the control's formatting properties (such as size and position), Data contains all the control's data source properties (e.g. to what field in an underlying table or query the control is bound), Event contains all the control's event properties (i.e. properties that define how the control will respond to user interaction like clicking or double clicking), and Other contains all miscellaneous properties, such as the control's name.

If you want several controls to have the same properties, such as color or width, you can set the properties of these controls simultaneously. After selecting one control, select all the other controls you want changed while holdind down the <Shift> key. Then change the properties in the Properties Window.

Some properties, such as name, style, and position properties exist for all controls. Others, such as various event and data source properties, exist for some controls and not others.

The toolbox controls belong to five major categories (listed below) and each control has a corresponding icon that appears on the toolbox.

Text boxes and labels are the default tools for looking at information in an Access form or report. Text boxes usually display data from a field in the underlying table or query, either directly or after Access performs calculation on the data. Labels, on the other hand, are usually captions or descriptive text entered directly by the database developer. Thus, text boxes are usually bound whereas labels are always unbound. Labels can be attached to other controls, however. Every text box you create on your form or report will automatically have an attached label, which can be subsequently used or deleted.

Another difference between the two is that text boxes can be interactive with the user while labels never are. Often, users enter information into text boxes and change data presented in text boxes. On the other hand, the user has no control over what is contained in a label.

Labels and textboxes can be created through the following icons on the toolbar:

Labels and textboxes appear as follows in Design View when they are first created:

You can bind the text box to the underlying table or query by clicking the text area in the Properties Window next to Control Source under the Data tab. A down arrow appears on the right. Click that and a list of all the fields in the underlying table or query appears. Select one and this will be the field that the control will be based on. The name of the field will then appear in the text box. When the user navigates his way through the underlying table or query using the form, each value in the underlying field will appear in the text box.

Notice also that Access provides default names for controls. It is usually a good idea to rename controls after you make them. You do this by selecting the control and entering its new name in the Name field under the Other tab in the Properties window. It's best to name a control as descriptively as possible to indicate what the control is and what its source is, such as txtLastName: "txt" indicates that the control is a text box, "LastName" that the text box is bound to the last name field in the underlying table or query.

The toolbox contains three different kinds of controls that display boolean, or yes/no values: check boxes, option buttons, and toggle buttons. The icons for these controls, as they appear on the toolbox, are shown below:

One feature that all yes/no option controls have in common is that they require user input. Whenever the user interacts with a database, this interaction is called an event. Selecting or de-selecting one of these controls is an event.

You can program an Access control to respond to an event by assigning event properties under the Event tab in the Properties Window. Here there will be a list of events such as "On Click" and "On Dbl Click" These are descriptions of ways the user can create events by interacting with the database (i.e. by clicking or double clicking on the control). In each of the text fields to the right of the events you can select a macro or enter an expression that will cause Access to perform a certain task when an event occurs, such as a certain text box being enabled or disabled when a check box is selected or de-selected.

See "About Setting the Value of a Control or Property in Response to an Event," "Set the Value of a Property in Response to an Event," and "Example of Setting the Value of a Property in Response to an Event" in Microsoft Access Help for more information on events and event properties. Also, see "About Macros and Macro Groups" and "Modify Macros" in Microsoft Access Help to learn more about macros in Access.

You will note that when you select a label and press the Event tab in the Properties window, no event list appears. This is because no event can occur with a label since labels are purely descriptive and do not allow user interaction of any kind.

Note also that yes/no controls can appear on a report, but the user will not be able to select them since reports also do not allow user interaction other than using the navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen.

Access' toolbox contains two types of drop-down boxes: a List box and a Combo box.

A final note for list and combo boxes: the most effective way to present values from a table in these controls is to create a query that extracts all the unique values from a table and sorts them. Thus, your data will appear sorted in the list or combo box.

Forms can be enhanced by including different kinds of graphics objects or including other forms inside the main form or report. The icons of the four major controls in this category, as they appear on the toolbox, are shown below:

You can improve the appearance of your forms with the Line Control, the Box Control, or the Page Break Control. The icons for these controls are shown below:

Another way to add a control to a form or report is to use the Field List. When a form is bound to a particular table or query, a Field List appears that lists all the fields of the underlying table or query. To make this list disappear, select the following Field List icon on the toolbar:

To make it appear again, click the same icon or select Field List under the View menu item on the toolbar. When both the Field List and the Toolbox are displayed, you can select the control type that you want to add in the Toolbox and then drag the field you want bound from the Field List to the form's design grid. The default control is the text box, which means that if you drag a field onto the form or report without first selecting a control, a text box displaying records of the chosen field will appear. If you select an inappropriate control (e.g. the Line control) a text box will also appear. In most cases, the alternatives to text boxes are list and combo boxes.

Access has easy drag-and-drop movement of controls in forms and reports. You select a control by clicking on it; once a control is selected, you should see "handles" appearing around it. These are small boxes that you can use to resize and move the control. You can also select several adjacent controls by "lassoing" them. To lasso, you need to click in an open space on the form or report, then drag the pointer through all of the controls that you want to select. Make sure that you start lassoing from a point that will allow you to drag through all of the desired controls without intersecting any others. To select controls that are not adjacent, begin by clicking on the first control and select subsequent controls by clicking on them while holding down the <Shift> key. Once selected, you can move a control and its attached label anywhere in the form by dragging it to a new location.

There are three ways to use the handles of a control. These three ways are represented by the three images that the cursor turns into when you select a control and then place the cursor on its border:

Access allows you to place all your controls in their desired locations.

Older versions of Access would not allow you to change one type of control into another. Instead, developers had to delete the control and create a new one. In the latest versions of Access however, you can make such on-the-fly changes by right-clicking the control in question and selecting Change To on the menu that appears.

There are, of course, limitations that apply. You cannot, for example, change a toggle button into a label. Thus, the Change To function is enabled only for similar controls. Text boxes, combo boxes, and list boxes can be changed into each other. All yes/no option controls can be changed into each other. Finally, text boxes can be changed into labels and vice versa.