- Using the grid in the Form painter
- Deleting controls in the Form painter
- Moving controls in the Form painter
- Copying and pasting controls in the Form painter
- Resizing controls in the Form painter
- Aligning controls in the Form painter
- Equalizing the space between controls in the Form painter
- Equalizing the size of controls in the Form painter
- Undoing changes in the Form painter
- Sliding controls in a form
This section describes how you can change the layout of any of the controls in a form.
The Form painter provides a grid to help you align controls.
About the grid
The Form painter grid is invisible. You cannot see it in the Layout view, but your controls can snap to the grid as you move them.
To use the grid in the Form painter:
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Select Design>Options from the menu bar.
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Use the options on the General page to:
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Make controls snap to a grid position when you place them or move them in a form
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Specify the size (height and width) of the grid cells
The options are:
Option
Meaning
Snap to Grid
If selected, controls snap to the grid when you place or move them
X
The width of each cell in the grid in pixels
Y
The height of each cell in the grid in pixels
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In all form styles except Grid
In all form styles except grid, you can move all the controls (such as headings, labels, columns, and drawing controls) anywhere you want.
To move controls in the Form painter:
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Select the controls you want to move.
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Drag the controls with the mouse, or press an arrow key to move the controls in one direction.
In grid forms
If you are working in a grid style form, you can reorder columns.
To reorder columns in the Form painter:
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If grid lines do not show in the column heading, select Grid Lines from the column heading pop-up menu.
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Select a column heading.
InfoMaker selects the column and displays a line representing the column border:
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Drag the column left or right.
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Release the mouse button to drop the column into position.
You can copy controls within a form and to other forms. All properties of the control are copied.
To copy a control in the Form painter:
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Select the control in the Layout view.
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Select Edit>Copy from the menu bar or press Ctrl+C.
The control is copied to the clipboard.
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Paste the control.
To paste the control within the same form, select Edit>Paste from the menu bar or press Ctrl+V.
To paste the control in another form, open the Form painter again, open the desired form, and paste the control.
InfoMaker pastes the control at the same location as in the source form. If you are pasting into the same form, you should move the pasted control so that it does not overlay the original control. InfoMaker displays a message box if the control you are pasting is not valid in the destination form.
Cutting controls
You can also select one or more controls and cut the controls by selecting Edit>Cut from the menu bar.
You can resize a control using the mouse or the keyboard.
Using the mouse
To resize a control using the mouse, select it, then grab an edge and drag it with the mouse.
Using the keyboard
To resize a control using the keyboard, select the control and do the following:
|
To make the control |
Press |
|---|---|
|
Wider |
Shift+Right Arrow |
|
Narrower |
Shift+Left Arrow |
|
Taller |
Shift+Down Arrow |
|
Shorter |
Shift+Up Arrow |
In grid forms
You can resize columns in grid forms.
Often you need to align several controls or make them all the same size. You can use the grid to align the controls, or have InfoMaker align them for you.
To align controls in the Form painter:
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Select the control whose position you want to use to align the others.
InfoMaker displays handles around the selected control.
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Extend the selection by pressing and holding the Ctrl key and clicking the controls you want to align with the first one.
All the controls have handles on them.
Avoid lasso selection for aligning controls
Avoid selecting controls by dragging the mouse to put a bounding box around multiple controls. You cannot control which control is used as the basis for aligning the other controls.
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Use the Layout drop-down toolbar in the PainterBar, or select Format>Align from the menu bar.
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Select the dimension along which you want to align the controls.
For example, to align the controls along the left side, click the Align L button in the Layout drop-down toolbar or select the first choice in the cascading menu.
InfoMaker moves all the selected controls to align with the first one.
If you have a series of controls and the spacing is fine between two of them but the spacing is wrong for the rest, you can easily equalize the spacing around all the controls.
To equalize the space between controls in the Form painter:
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Select the two controls whose spacing is correct.
To do this, click one control, then press Ctrl and click the second control.
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Select the other controls whose spacing you want to have the same as the first two controls by pressing Ctrl and clicking.
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Use the Layout drop-down toolbar in the PainterBar, or select Format>Space from the menu bar.
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Select the dimension whose spacing you want to equalize.
For example, to equalize the vertical spacing of the controls, click the Space V button in the Layout drop-down toolbar or select the second choice in the cascading menu.
Say you have several controls in a form and want their sizes to be the same. You can accomplish this manually or by using the Edit menu.
To equalize the size of controls in the Form painter:
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Select the control whose size is correct.
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Select the other controls whose size you want to match to the first control by pressing Ctrl and clicking the controls.
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Use the Layout drop-down toolbar in the PainterBar, or select Format>Size from the menu bar.
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Select the dimension whose size you want to equalize.
For example, to equalize the width of the controls, click the Size W button in the Layout drop-down toolbar or select the first choice in the cascading menu.
You can undo your changes to a form.
You can specify that you want to eliminate blank lines or spaces in a form by sliding columns and other controls to the left or up if there is blank space. You can use this feature to remove extra spaces between fields (such as first name and last name) when you run the form.
To use sliding columns or controls:
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Select Properties from the pop-up menu of the controls and then select the Position tab in the Properties view:
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Select the Slide options you want.
Option
Description
Slide Left
Slide the column or control to the left if there is nothing to the left. Be sure the control does not overlap the control to the left. Sliding left does not work if the controls overlap.
Slide Up - All Above
Slide the column or control up if there is nothing in the row above (the row above must be completely empty for the column or control to slide up).
Slide Up - Directly Above
Slide the column or control up if there is nothing directly above it in the row above.
If you are sliding columns up
Even blank columns have height, so if you want columns to slide up, you need to specify as Autosize Height all columns above that might be blank and that you want to slide other columns up through. You also specify Autosize Height on the Position property page.
