Hide each control, control group or subform?

[BRV]

I'm setting up a form that (depending on an option selected) will either show or hide some of the controls.

There are about 30 usable controls, ranging from option groups to text boxes and command buttons. Also a bunch of other non-usable labels, lines etc.

They will be hidden or shown in groups of roughly 1/3 of the total controls.

My question is what would be considered best practice here:

1) To set the controls in subforms



2) To group the controls and use a For Each statement based on the .tag property

3) To manually show/hide each control


I believe that (1) would be the easiest, but I once read that subforms carry a lot of overhead. (2) would probably be my second choice, but carries more code than (1). I hope nobody says (3) since I'd sure not like to code all of that.

Or, is there another, better choice?

Suggestions are appreciated!

[aytee111]

Here is a 4th suggestion: make a rectangle box to cover all the controls with background the same color as the form. Do a Send To Front. Then hide and unhide just that one control - when you make it visible it should cover over all the controls under it and hide them.

[BRV]

Here is a 4th suggestion: make a rectangle box to cover all the controls with background the same color as the form. Do a Send To Front. Then hide and unhide just that one control - when you make it visible it should cover over all the controls under it and hide them.

That's a good suggestion. I wonder though how that would work if the user tabbed through to the control.

I'm also considering maybe disabling vs hiding, just so that the user doesn't see a big blank spot on the form.