Forms and Bound/Unbound Controls

Forms

First of all, forms look immensely more professional than typing in to a data table. Secondly, typing into a form is much easier to type information into, especially if there are many fields and you would end of scrolling off to the side to continue entering your information. With a form you would most likely be able to position all data fields on one page and could see all of the information as it was typed into the table. An important point to remember is your tab order. Reset this if need be to proceed sequentially through the form fields. You can see the order of the data easier and it is much easier to read all of the data in each record when viewed in the form.

It is also easier to see the data for verification and changing it needed.


Bound Control – This gets its value from a field in the table and as the data changes so does the value of the found control. The data fields that I added to my form to enter all of the contestant information are examples of bound controls.

Positives are that you can scroll through all of the data and check each as needed, and some of these controls on your forms can be drop down menus for easier selection of the data to fill the field. One must be careful though if you are moving through the data quickly and changing information as you could inadvertently change data by mistake. You also have to be careful as to what data you are looking at since in a bound control the data changes from one record to the next. Be sure you are on the right data record. Also, are the bound controls of data correctly represented by any unbound controls, graphics and other identifying photos, correct.

Unbound Control – These are items that have no connection to the data that is being entered in the table about the contestants. On my form the example would be the line that I drew to separate the field names from the fields where the data is being entered. If I wanted to put the BPA logo on the input form, that would be another example of an unbound control.

With unbound controls, since the data does not change as the data record changes, you will have to be sure that any graphics and/or photos that are placed as an unbound control correctly correlate to the bound controls on the same form. This could take a lot of time in any placements that you may have to do. While unbound controls can also improve the looks of your forms, such as lines and logos and graphics, too many can also clutter your form and may actually diminish the positive aspect of a form for readability and data input.