Box in form displaying information

[WTE]

Hi

I have been trying for a while on my own, but I have reached the point where I might need a nudge in the right direction. I have a form on which volunteers have to enter time and temperatures. There are more than 80 entry fields, so rather than having descripters near each box I would like the boxes themselves to display their function until they are clicked. For example, I would have a box that reads "Time" - volunteers would then click that box to enter a time, and the "Time" text will disappear. I thought of using a default value for each box, which could somewhat do the job, but it has a few negative sides to it: it would add to the data I need to store when the field is not used, and the text must be marked and deleted for each entry making it time consuming and inefficient. Do you have any ideas?

I appreciate your help very much - I am creating the database for a not-for-profit, on a not-for-profit basis.

WTE

 

[MarkK]

Check out the Format property of a text box which is the first field of the Format tab of the textbox's property sheet in design view.
If you enter text like ...

@;[Red]" < enter last name >"

... it will display the existing bound data, if present, but if the control contains a null it will display--in red-- ...

[COLOR="Red"]< enter last name >[/COLOR]

There are quite a number of these specialized formats available for textboxes. Take a close look at Access help and you can find a bunch more info.
Cheers,

 

[missinglinq]

What exactly is the real world application here? More than 25-30 fields is generally considered to be a sign of a non-normalized, improperly designed database.

Having said that, what I've done when dealing with users not really proficient in database usage, is to have a Label at the bottom of the form that I use to inform the user of the current control's purpose.

It's tedious, but I place a Label sized to the maximum length I'll need, with the text set as Centered, then

1. In each appropriate control's OnEnter event set the Caption to a maximun length of spaces
2. Set the Caption to the message to be displayed.
3. In each control's OnExit event set the Caption to a maximun length of spaces.

If your form only has controls to enter data, which is to say you'll always be moving from one textbox to another, you could omit step # 3.

 

[WTE]

Thanks Lagbolt, I will try that in the morning.

As to the real world application:

The form (and underlying table) is to contain temperatures and the times those temperatures were recorded. That procedure must be done up to five times for one item and there will be 8 items on the form - so it adds up to quite a few. This particular part of the database need not be dynamic since the entered data will never be used. It is there to be retrieved only upon request. That is, who ever needs the temperatures (say, the state - the items are foods while they are cooked and stored) can find them in the table on the very rare occasion a temperature must be found. Does that make any sense?

I have been careful with the principles of normalization in the creation of the database - though I am new at this. I would appreciate it if you have any insight as to whether or not I may have violated normalization.

Thanks,

WTE