Microsoft Access 2003 - Stop Selecting Entire Fields When Using the Keyboard

SUMMARY: Prevent Access 2003 from selecting entire fields when navigating via the arrow keys.

When navigating data in Microsoft Access 2003 such as through tables, when you use the cursor keys to move between fields and records, the currently selected field becomes completely highlighted. When this happens, if you accidentally press a character, the entire field will get replaced with said character, usually resulting in a frantic undo operation.

You can change this behavior so that navigating through data results in the cursor being placed at the beginning or end of the field. This way, if you accidentally press a character, the entire field will not get overwritten. The downside is that this makes it harder to navigate via the left and right arrow keys as you will have to move through each character of a field before navigating to the next one. However, the Tab and Shift+Tab keystrokes will still jump between fields as expected.

1. Open or create a database to enable the "Tools" - "Options" menu.

2. Click "Tools" - "Options".

3. When the "Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the "Keyboard" tab.

4. Underneath "Behavior entering field", either click the "Go to start of field" or "Go to end of field" radio button as desired.

5. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.