All you need to know about tabbed pages:

First thing to remember is that the Tabbed Pages are all part of a single
form; think of it as a really long form turned on its side. Because it is all
one form, all referrencing to any contol on it is done in the same manner as
if they were all on one single screen. Create a form in Design View. Goto the
toolbox and click on the Tabbed Control icon; it actually looks like several
manila file folders. Place it on your form and adjust the size to your liking.
If you need more than the two tabbed pages it initially gives you, click on
the tabbed control to select it. Goto Insert and click on Tabbed Control Page
and another tabbed page will be added. Do this as many times as neccessary.

This is the really important part: when you go to add a control to a tabbed
page, you must first click to select one of the pages, then add the control.
Otherwise, the control will be added to the form itself, and will show thru
on all tabbed pages!

Once you have the form's Control Source (your table or a query) set up, you
simple add controls as you normally would, heeding the above paragraph.

Please elaborate on "doesn't work".  A TabControl is merely a way to make a
larger form fit on the screen.  If one giant form would do the job then
there is no reason why a form with a TabControl cannot be made to work.

This will usually cause write conflicts because to Access one user editing
the same record with two forms is identical to two completely different
users editing the same record.  Always saving and refreshing as you move
between forms "might' solve that problem, but then you have difficulties
with required fields and other validation.

Use a single form with a TabControl.  If desired you can even set the style
of the TabControl to "None" and use buttons to change pages.  This would
give almost the same appearance as separate forms to the user.