Question

I have a tab control with different pages. When starting up the form with this tab control the tabs get lost and the inner page gets all the screen focus. The tab control is used for navigation so the user will get lost this way.

Is there any way to let the tabs be visible on the screen without just resizing the screen to be smaller?

Desired result:

+--------------------+
| Tab1 | Tab2 | Tab3 |
+--------------------+
| Name: ______       |

Actual screen:

                        ^
+--------------------+ |_|
| Name: ______       | | |

Answer 1

Reducing the size of the tab control works (as you discovered yourself), however there is an alternative workaround:

1. Add a command button and align it with the top left corner of the tab control
2. Set its Tab Stop property to No (in the ‘Other’ tab of the command button property sheet)
3. Send To Back to put the command button behind the tab control
4. In the Form’s OnOpen or OnLoad event, call the .SetFocus method on the command button
5. Use SendKeys (I know, I know…) to tab to the Tab Control

Sample code:

Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer)
    Me.HiddenCommandButton.SetFocus
    SendKeys "{Tab}"
End Sub

Explanation of the above steps:

1. This allows you to dictate to Access where it should line up the form on screen.
2. Setting the Tab Stop to No for the command button prevents users from accidentally tabbing to it and causing confusion.
3. Sending the button to the back hides it from the user and prevents it from interfering with any mouse clicking.
4. Setting focus to the command button at form start up is necessary since we turned off the Tab Stop property in step 2.
5. Using SendKeys (always a last resort, and for good reason) to simulate a tab press provides “keyboard focus” to the Tab Control (as long as the tab control is the first control in the tab order for whatever section of the form the control is a part of).

Miscellaneous Notes: At the asker’s request I am including a couple of comments as part of the answer itself:

@mwolfe: One final note on SendKeys…it blows up under UAC in
Vista/Win7. If you can live without
the keyboard focus, I’d say leave
SendKeys out entirely. If you need it
you’ll either want to add error
handling to ignore the error (if you
don’t mind some of your users losing
keyboard focus functionality) or
bypass SendKeys and use the WinAPI
directly. Karl Peterson offers a
turnkey solution here:
vb.mvps.org/samples/SendInput I have
never used it so can’t comment on its
reliability, but Karl is a Microsoft
MVP so he’s get some credibility.

@Roman Glass: mwolfe02 I trust you in that this method will work, but the
focus is crucial for me AND some users
are working under Windows 7. I will
drop this issue for the moment to find
out about the user reactions.
Nevertheless I think your solution
deserves a solved. In the end I have
to talk with the WinAPI. Maybe you can
edit your answer to include this
comment directly. Thanks!

For those who may find this answer in the future, please take note that Step 5 above is only necessary if you need the tab control to receive keyboard focus (a critical requirement for the original asker). If you can live without it, I would suggest that you do.

UPDATE: As David Fenton points out in the comments, you can use Ctl + Tab/Ctl + Shift + Tab to move back and forth between the tabs. This is consistent with most tabbed interfaces (eg, browsers) and eliminates the need to use SendKeys.