When filling out a form, many people use a keyboard instead of a mouse to move from field to field. Therefore, it is important that the controls on your form template have a logical tab order.
By default, the tab order in a Microsoft Office InfoPath form template is left to right, top to bottom, just as it is on a Web page. In some cases you may need to change the default tab order for your form template. For example, you can specify a custom tab order for a repeating table so that users can navigate column by column rather than row by row.
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Right-click the control for which you want to change the tab order, and then click Control Properties. For example, to open the properties of a text box control, right-click the control, and then click Text Box Properties.
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Click the Advanced tab.
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In the Tab index box, enter something other than 0. For example, to specify that users navigate to this control the first time that they press the TAB key, enter 1.
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To change the tab order for additional controls, repeat steps 1 through 3.
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To test your changes, click Preview on the Standard toolbar, or press CTRL+SHIFT+B.
Notes:
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The default tab index setting for all controls on a form template is 0, but the tab order starts with 1. That is, a control with 1 in the Tab index box is visited first when users press the TAB key, a control with 2 in the Tab index box is visited second, and so on. A control with 0 in the Tab index box will come last in the tab order. To skip any control in the tab order, enter -1 in the Tab index box.
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Changing the tab index setting doesn't change the order in which you move through the controls in design mode.
