Using Unbound Forms does away with the main reason that developers choose to use MS Access, which is to take advantage of it ability to facilitate the RAD (Rapid Application Development) of Databases.
With Bound Forms, Access does the vast majority of the heavy lifting; with Unbound Forms the developer has to write code for just about everything, even the most mundane tasks. Several developers I know, experienced in Visual Basic database development, as well as Access development, estimate that development, using Unbound Forms, by highly experienced developers, takes two to three times as long, using Unbound Forms, as it does when using Access and Bound Forms.
In short, there is very little that can be done using Unbound Forms that cannot be accomplished with Bound Forms, and usually done with less work!
Anyone who insists on using Unbound Forms, would be far better off using a straight VB or C++ front end with a SQL Server or Oracle back end.
- You can create an EXE file which gives total protection to your code/design
- You can distribute the db to PCs without a copy of Access being on board
- Your data security will be far, far better than anything you can do in Access
It should be added that there are a few very specialized reasons for using Unbound Forms in Access, for general data entry of Records, but they are very specialized, and situations that a newbie (I'm guessing you're new to Access) is very unlikely to come upon. I've been writing Access apps for well over two decades now, and have never had the need for using Unbound Forms for general data entry.
Linq ;0)>
The problem with making anything foolproof...is that fools are so darn ingenious!
All posts/responses based on Access 2003/2007