Hiding Property Window

This tip Hiding Property Window explains how to automatically hide the property window, when the form or report is not in design view.

From Microsoft Access 2000 onward (I think, although don’t quote me), if you have the ‘Properties’ window open when the form is in Design view and you change to Normal view, the property window remains displayed. This can sometimes be a nuisance for you when you are building the database and you would definitely not want this to occur if you are distributing your database to other users.

Note: This tip is not suitable for Microsoft Access 2007 or Microsoft Access 2010 as Microsoft has removed the 'Allow Design Changes' property from the property list.

If though you have Microsoft Access 2000 - 2003 you can make sure this does not happen:

With the form in ‘Design’ view;

Open the ‘Properties’ window of the form by right clicking in the upper left hand corner of the form; where the two rulers meet, and select ‘Properties’ from the drop down list;

Click on the ‘Other’ tab. The last property will be ‘Allow Design Changes’, change this to ‘Design View Only’.

Now the ‘Properties’ window will only appear when the form is in ‘Design’ view.

Hope this tip on 'Hiding Property Window' is helpful.

If you are using Microsoft Access 2007 or Microsoft Access 2010 and would like to control 'Allow Design Changes' then I suggest you read Allen Browne discussion re this.  You will need to scroll down towards the bottom of the page to see this topic, but there are lots of other interesting topics along the way, that might also be of interest to you.

While on the subject of properties, another tip, which will help you to streamline building forms and reports is knowing how to change many properties at once.