SIZING ACCESS FORMS TO VARYING MONITOR SIZES 1

[Hiccup]

I've sized all of my MS Access 2000 Forms for a 19" monitor, but on a 15" monitor of course they're too large for the screen and scroll bars appear. Not knowing what size monitor the user will have, is there VBA code available to automatically fit the Forms to the screen regardless of the user's screen size? Or is it necessary for the user to change their screen resolution, which I would prefer to avoid.

Ed "Hiccup" Hicks

 

[psemianonymous]

The short answer is no, there is no good way to resize the forms. A few things to know:

1. It is screen resolution (and accessibility settings) which determine how much of a form is displayed.
2. Program forms for 800x600 compatibility, so that your form fits on a screen running at this resolution. Anything below this is simply too small in my opinion. Test your forms by actually switching your screen resolution down to 800x600 before creating a new form.
3. Form settings remain based on "saved" positions. I will go into some detail:
If you open a form, resize it, and press <CTRL>-S, it will save the current position. Say, you save the form as nearly filling your 1200x1024 display, because that way you can see more records. Later the elderly woman down the hall who runs at 800x600 opens the form and BLAMMO. The form extends far beyond the reaches of her screen.

This last thing is a problem I'm having, because I am using a shared front-end on the network. If you have separate front ends, each user can save their own form settings, but I don't have this option (at this time anyway).


Ways to optimize form usage:
1. Individual user front ends with regular forms. Just make sure the forms are reasonably sized. At the LEAST, make your forms &quot;vertical scroll only&quot; - which means make them fit width-wise.
2. On each of your forms, on the &quot;On Activate&quot; event, add the line

DoCmd.Maximize

and it will maximize each of the forms. This gets tricky (and ugly) when you are moving between two open forms or attempting to close forms or ... there are many situations which make this solution far from ideal. But it works, and you can fit more on the screen than any other way.

--
Find common answers using Google Groups:

http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.databases.ms-access

Corrupt MDBs FAQ

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/corruptmdbs.htm

 

[psemianonymous]

Also, I forgot the third solution. I don't personally like it, but you may:

http://www.mvps.org/access/general/gen0002.htm

This basically &quot;compresses&quot; the pixels on your form down to the screen resolution.

--
Find common answers using Google Groups:

http://groups.google.com/groups?group=comp.databases.ms-access

Corrupt MDBs FAQ

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/corruptmdbs.htm

 

[gavinjb]

If you drop me an email to gjb@ntlworld.com, I can send you an access Addin which will automatically resize your controls as you resize your form. I can't remember where I got it from but it works quite well.

 

[evalesthy]

Foolio - it is worth mentioning in response to your item #3 that a forms BorderStyle property can be used to prevent a form from being resized thru dragging if set to other than 'sizable'.