Display Access Design View Forms on Top

I continue to do more and more development within Microsoft Access 2007. I’m still learning the ropes on how to do stuff but there’s something we’ve come across that is an extreme annoyance and it seems like a pretty obvious fix and solution.

We are working on a variety of applications that consist of a number of data entry forms and displays. While troubleshooting the applications and adding features, sometimes you need to pop open the form in Access Design View and make some changes.

Because the form you’re working on is dependent on some of the other forms that are open for passing and sharing values and other parameters, they may all need to be open as well.

The challenge is that when you switch the form to Access Design View, the vast majority of the time it ends up being buried behind all the other forms, task panes and other items that may be open in your application workspace.

We then spend wasted time moving windows around, sliding them off to other screens, or sliding them off to the edges of the screens so we can get to and begin working on the form we need in Access Design View.

Why in the world wouldn’t a form that’s in Access Design View be modal and pop to the front of the display? It’s obviously the one that’s needing to be worked on if I switched it to Access Design View in the first place right?

If you’ve got a solution for this or agree with me, let us hear it in the comments.