When building an object by hand in design mode, it can sometimes be difficult to get the controls lined up just the way you want by hand. The ruler guides on the outside edges of the Design view window might help a bit, but Access lets you ‘snap’ the controls to the grid of points that is visible when in Design view:

 

 

If you open a form or report in Design view and make a few controls, you can specify how you want them aligned by using the right-click menu. Consider the following diagram containing a command button, a radio button, and a list:

 

To align the controls, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click each control to highlight them (remember to select both parts of objects like radio buttons; that is select the actual button and its label):

 

 

Then right-click on any of the controls, point to Align, and then select one of the options:

 

 

The first four options align all of the controls to the corresponding edge of the leftmost, rightmost, uppermost, or lowermost control. Selecting ‘To Grid’ will align the controls to the nearest grid point. Selecting ‘Bottom’ does the following to our selected controls:

 

 

If you don’t like the look of a particular change you have made, you can always use the Undo command in the Edit menu.