I'm just starting to play around with conditional formatting.

I have a form where users can only retrieve information (not add/edit/delete). The form appears busy, but in fact users only need to select from two comboboxes to retrieve information.

So, I thought that when the form opens and Combo1 has the focus, conditional formatting would make Combo1 have a yellow background. After the user selects a value from Combo1, then the code moves the focus to Combo2 and it now has a yellow background. When a selection is made from Combo2, then the entire form is filled in with data in all fields.

However, I was thinking, that once the comboboxes have data in them, if they receive the focus, should the background color still be yellow or white. It seems like the whole purpose of having the yellow background is to let the user quickly know which fields need to have values in order to retrieve data to fill in the form. I used the 'Field Has Focus' condition to perform the background coloring.

But again, once that combobox has a value does it make sense to once again to change the background color to yellow which is currently what is happening because of the conditional formatting setting.

If not, I can't figure out how to turn off that conditional formatting (Field Has Focus) once the field has a value but again receives the focus.

Thanks for any suggestions or ideas.

IMHO...
The most usefull feature that you could implement in a "busy" form would be formatting that makes it easy
for the user to know exactly where he is on the form. Highlighting the active field by changing the background
color is the best way to do this. The most efficient way to achieve this effect does not require any coding or
conditional formatting at all. Instead, you select all the textbox and combobox controls in your form and set their
Back Color property to whatever highlight color you wish to use. Then set their Back Style property
to Transparent. This should achieve the desired effect.

I would resist the temptation to add further formatting to call attention to empty fields. The fact that they ARE
empty where other fields are not serves the purpose quite neatly. Less Is More.