How to do responsive design in MS Access forms?

Question

So there are a couple of custom forms in an Access 2007 that gets skewed when viewed in different resolutions. Access does not seem to have any options like in CSS for responsive design.

Is there a way to implement responsive design in Access?

Answer 1

You can adopt control anchoring and thus controls on a form will flow down and to the right very much like a web page.

The anchoring works much better in 2010, but 2007 does have this feature.

So note VERY close how the buttons and the size of the text box in this Access form re-sizes:

now re-size the form:

NOTE careful how the top buttons on the right moved and STAY on the right side. NOTE careful how the text box on the top menu bar expanded from one line to two lines.

And you can now add web like hover and shadow effects (in 2010) like this:

The above form is NATIVE and ZERO third party controls here used (so even the style for the buttons round and oval ones were built using ONLY access and no external graphic was imported to create the shadow and button effects.

The web like effects for above is an access 2010 feature, but the first forms showing re-sizing and anchoring controls was available in 2007.

Here is another example of a picture re-sizing when the form is re-sized:

Note again, no code was used, but just control anchoring.

So the “web” like approach to allowing controls to flow and expand down the page is available in Access.

Here is a 2007 version article describing this web like approach to placing controls on a form:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/make-controls-stretch-shrink-or-move-as-you-resize-a-form-HA010253986.aspx

And here is a short video that shows above in action:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/watch-this-add-or-remove-controls-from-a-layout-HA010276551.aspx?CTT=1