Selecting Controls
After you add a control to the form, you can resize, move, or copy it. The first step is to select one or more controls. Depending on its size, a selected control may show from four to eight handles (small squares called moving and sizing handles) around the control—at the corners and midway along the sides. The Move handle in the upper-left corner is larger than the other handles and you use it to move the control. You use the other handles to size the control. Figure 35-11 displays some selected controls and their moving and sizing handles.
Figure 35-11. A conceptual view of selecting controls and their moving and sizing handles.
The Select command (top leftmost command) in the Controls group must be on for you to select a control. The pointer appears as an arrow pointing diagonally toward the upper-left corner. If you use the Controls group to create a single control, Access automatically reselects the pointer as the default.
Selecting a single control
Select any single control by clicking anywhere on the control. When you click a control, the handles appear. If the control has an attached label, the Move handle for the label also appears. If you select a label control that is part of an attached control, all the handles for the label control are displayed, and only the Move handle appears in the attached control.
Selecting multiple controls
You can select multiple controls in these ways:
Click each desired control while holding down the Shift key.
Drag the pointer through or around the controls that you want to select.
Drag in the ruler to select a range of controls.
Figure 35-11 shows selecting the multiple bound controls graphically. When you select multiple controls by dragging the mouse, a rectangle appears as you drag the mouse. Be careful to only drag the rectangle through the controls you want to select. Any control you touch with the rectangle or enclose within it is selected. If you want to select labels only, make sure that the selection rectangle only encloses the labels.
Tip
If you find that controls are not selected when the rectangle passes through the control, you may have the Selection behavior global property set to fully enclosed. This means that a control is selected only if the selection rectangle completely encloses the entire control. The normal default for this option is partially enclosed. Change this option by clicking the Microsoft Office Button and selecting Access Options. Then select Object Designers and set the Forms/Reports Selection behavior to Partially Enclosed.
By holding down the Shift key, you can select several noncontiguous controls. This lets you select controls on totally different parts of the screen. Using Shift to select controls is different from using Shift to select files in Windows Explorer and fields in the Field List. You have to Shift+click on each control to add it to the selection.
Tip
Click on the form in Design View and then press Ctrl+A to select all the controls on the form. Press Shift and click on any selected control to remove it from the selection.
Deselecting controls
Deselect a control by clicking an unselected area of the form that doesn’t contain a control. When you do so, the handles disappear from any selected control. Selecting another control also deselects a selected control.