Controls in Form Footer cannot be moved correctly in design view

[keyboarder]

I have a form with a footer and a few textbox and label controls in the footer. In Design View when I try to move any of the controls with the mouse or the keyboard, the controls are either placed at the top of the footer or sometimes even moved to the bottom of the Detail section. I can successfully position the controls in the footer if I edit the Top, Left properties, but the mouse and keyboard cannot be used without the bad behavior.



This happens regardless of whether I move one control or multiple controls at the same time. This behavior is new and did not happen with the initial development of the form months ago. It happens in Access 2013 and Access 2016 both on Windows 10 running on different computers. There nothing particularly unique about this form that I can tell. I have other forms with footers, but can move controls on those form footers without problem.

Has anyone experienced this before or know why it behaves this way?

[Bulzie]

Does the control have a label bound to it? Sometimes when you move the field, it has to move the label also if it is bound to the control and can cause placement issues. Try adding an unbound text box and delete the label part, then try to move it around and see if you have an issue.

[keyboarder]

It so happens that the existing textboxes have associated label controls, but there are also independent labels that exhibit the same weird behavior. I also added a new textbox then deleted its label, and it exhibits the same weird behavior when I try to move it. If I select and attempt to move one of the TextBox controls, the associated label is positioned with it at the top of the footer (as described above). It exhibits the same problem if I try moving the TextBox using the "independent handle" (the little square in the top-left corner of the control). That was a worthwhile consideration, but the expected behavior is still for a control to be position-able with the mouse regardless of whether it has an associated label or not.

[davegri]

Don't drag them between sections, Cut and paste.

[keyboarder]

I don't want to drag them between sections. I simply want to reposition (i.e. move) them within the Footer, but sometimes they erroneously jump to the Detail section.

As a side note, even if I did want to move them between sections, I have successfully used the drag and drop technique many times and that works just fine in many instances. What I am reporting is erroneous behavior that I have never observed after developing many Access forms. I would have chalked it up to another Access bug, but I wondered if anyone had observed the same thing or perhaps some property or other aspect of the form of which I was unaware.

[Micron]

Sounds to me like the footer and detail controls are part of the same group. When you select one of the footer controls, does a small "ghosted" box with a cross inside it appear anywhere? Look real carefully as it can be hard to see among a whole lot of other controls. If so, then you have a grouping and trying to move one is affecting the whole group. The solution would be to select one, right click on it and go to Layout> and select "Remove". It doesn't remove the contol, just the grouping.

[keyboarder]

Thanks everyone for your ideas. @Micron, no it's not grouped controls either.

I think that I determined at least partly why its happening and why I didn't observe it earlier. The Detail section of my form is over 21". It seems that the maximum size of the Detail section is 22" -- at least that is the largest that the designer will let the form be sized with the mouse. I made a blank sample form to play with. If the combined height of the Header, Footer and Detail sections are less than about 22.00" then I can freely position controls in either section as expected. But as soon as the either section is resized so they exceed a combined height greater than 22", if a control is positioned below that maximum combined height then it is automatically repositioned around 22" when releasing the mouse button or attempting to move with the keyboard. If the overall position of 22" is within the footer then the control remains in the footer, but if 22" is within the Detail section the control jumps to the Detail section from the Footer section (for instance, if the header is 1" high, Detail section 21" high and Footer is 3" high).

As far as I can tell, this is only a Design View problem. Form View displays as expected if controls are positioned by setting the Top and Left properties, even if exceeding the maximum 22". At the least this is a quirky way of enforcing some overall maximum height, but I think it's just a bug in the designer since it can be overcome by setting properties.

I did not notice this before because I designed the footer before incrementally adding more controls to my form, extending the length to exceed the overall 22".

[Micron]

Not sure I'd call it a bug as much as a design limitation. The max section height is reported to be 22.75", along with an overall max of 200, but that's listed as being in design view.
https://www.accessforums.net/showthread.php?t=65842

Maybe you should consider scrollable subforms?

[keyboarder]

I already have 3 subforms and 2 tab controls and I can of course rework the entire form to fit what I need, but a scrolling form worked just fine and the size limit seems a bit arbitrary. It's just a virtual work space, not like it's actually taking up 22.75". Of course, many of Access design features are for physical prints and the A2 paper size is 23.4" so maybe that's the source of the limit. Whatever the reason, Access already allows other very ugly and messy layouts, so why not 32" or A0 poster size instead of 22.75"?