Software Tips & Tricks Enable and Lock Form Fields in Access

By Laura Noble

In an Access form you may have fields that should not be edited or copied. Disabling or locking these fields will speed data entry and guarantee that these fields do not change.

Changing the Enable property of a field from Yes to No will dim the field control as shown in the sample below with the Client ID field. Data cannot be edited or selected/copied when a field is disabled.

After changing the Lock property of a field from No to Yes the field will have normal display, data can be copied but not changed.

Changing Enable/Lock Form Properties:

1. Open the form in Design view.
2. Right-mouse click on the field that requires the enable/lock change.
3. Select Properties.
4. Click the All or Data tab and change the Enable or the Lock settings.
   

To further speed up data entry remove the Tab Stop from the field by following these steps:

1. Open the form in Design view.
   
2. Right-mouse click on the field that requires the removal of the tab stop.
3. Click the All or the Other tab and change the Tab Stop setting from Yes to No.
   

Stay tuned to Networking Today in the coming months for more Software Tips & Tricks from Noble Software Solutions.

Laura Noble is the owner of Noble Software Solutions. Laura can be contacted at 519-680-2689 or by email at lnoble@noblesoftwaresolutions.com. www.noblesoftwaresolutions.com

Published in Networking Today, August 2005.