I am using Pan X to do a database of Invoices. I cannot for the life of me find how to manually setup the “Tab Order”. I have tried the settings in “Form Properties”, but they do not allow me to manually set the tab order of the fields on my form. I am sure this is something obvious, appreciate any help. Thanks.
Doug
You’ve found the Form Properties and where to indicate the order to use: Natural, Data Sheet or Front to Back. Natural means to simply flow sequentially through the form: left to right, top to bottom. Data Sheet follows the order of the fields as they’re established in the Data Sheet no matter where they are within your form.
My guess is that you’re pursuing Front to Back. In that case, see Objects>Arrange and the choices of sending objects forward or backward. Objects are layered and the Front to Back tabs from the frontmost object, downward through the layers.
An easy way to set the flow is to select the object you want to start with. Choose Send to Back. Then go to the next object for your tab sequence and again choose Send to Back. Keep going through your desired tab order in this manner. By the time you get to the final object and send it to the back, your first object is now ahead of all the others. Tabbing from Front to Back will now follow the sequence you just established.
Yes!! I think that will work. Thanks so much for clarifying this. I appreciate it.
I guess the Panorama X documentation doesn’t include Tab Order yet. However, it works exactly as described on pages 670-671 of the Panorama 6 Handbook.
Thanks Jim
That’s actually Back to Front, rather than Front to Back. Successively using “Bring to Front” will leave your first choice at the back.
Another question on this topic. In Panorama 6, in a form, using a procedure, I could tab to another data cell to a variety of data cells based on the information I entered in the current data cell. For example, in my checkbook, in my Input form, if I entered “Deposit” into the data cell for the “Description” field, and tabbed out of that field, it would go to the data cell for the “Credit” field. If any other data was entered into the “Description” data cell, it would tab to the “Debit” field.
In Panorama X, I can get that to work using the data sheet, but not within a form. Is it possible to do that within a form in Panorama X, using Text Edit objects? I haven’t been able to get it to work. Any help would be appreciated.
It is not currently possible to alter the tab order programmatically in Panorama X. In fact, I’m surprised you got it to work in the data sheet. This is on my list of things to do, the plan is to add a specific feature for this rather than relying on backdoor methods as was done in Panorama 6, which were difficult and not always reliable.
I ran into caper’s problem, searched the forum and didn’t find this thread. But when I started to write a new post the forum software was smart enough to point me here. Cool! Now that I know I can’t, yet, do this I can suspend my wasteful efforts until you enable this.
Anything new for tab order?
Is there any change to the way you set the tab order now?
I have a form and the tabs take me all over the place and I’m wondering the best way to set my preferred tab order?
The basic technique for setting tab order in a form hasn’t changed in a couple of decades. It sounds like your form is probably set to Back to front order, when you probably want either Natural order (the default for a new form) or Data sheet order.
This is a very old thread, and my post from 2017 isn’t accurate any more. Here’s the documentation for this feature (however, I don’t think this is what @svsmailus is looking for, I think he probably just needs to click Natural order and he’ll be all set).
Thank you! Setting the tab order to natural and grouping the fields in the form did the trick.
