You will sometimes find that you want to keep some of the current properties for an object, but have it appear differently in the form, for example it might be convenient to have a numeric field change to a spin box, but retain all other properties.

You can do this from the right-mouse menu on the object, which offers you all the alternative objects from the same group. For example to change an Action Button into a Tool Button (which expects a bitmap rather than a text caption):

The object will retain all the properties which are common to the old and new types, although you will find that the designer does not throw away the ‘dead’ properties until you exit. This allows you to experiment, for example to switch a Radio-group to a List-box, and switch back again without losing any of the properties along the way.

N.B. To change the type of a form, use the ‘Change Type‘ submenu in the same way, but you will find this under ‘Edit’ on the right mouse menu. This might be used to redefine a stand-alone form as an MDI child or incorporate it into a tabbed dialogue.