Skip to main content

MS Access Diving Right In

So you’re ready to dive in. Well done, you! It’s easy to start Access. You can start the application in multiple ways, accommodating nearly any situation you’re in. (Chapter 1 discusses most of them.) Whether you’re starting Access to view and edit an existing Access database (which gives you what you see in Figure 2-2) or are about to create your own (which opens the application and displays the list of Recent databases and template icons, shown in Figure 2-3), you can get to the tools you need right away. Figure 2-2 shows an existing database open to one of its tables; its other components are listed on the left side of the workspace.

When you first open the application (as you also discover in Chapter 1), you’re presented with a workspace that offers three basic ways to make that swan dive into the pool that is Access. You can open an existing database by double-clicking it by name in the Explorer window or from an icon on your Desktop, you can start Access from the Start menu in Windows 7 or the Start screen in Windows 8, and then pick which existing database you want to work with, you can start a new, blank database from scratch, or you can start out with one of the Access templates.

Figure 2-2: Open Access and your existing database in one fell swoop.
Figure 2-2: Open Access and your existing database in one fell swoop.

Figure 2-3 shows the various template icons displayed when you choose New from the left-hand panel.

If you opened Access by using the Start menu or Start screen or a Desktop/Taskbar icon and now you want to open an existing database, you can use the Recent list in the panel on the left (see Figure 2-4), or if you haven’t used the database in question for a while, you can use the Open Other Files command.

When you use the Recent list, clicking any one of the Recent Databases listed opens that sucker right up, displaying its parts on the panel on the left side of the workspace.

Figure 2-3: You can build a database from nothing or from something — in the form of an Access template.
Figure 2-3: You can build a database from nothing or from something — in the form of an Access template.

So that’s it, really — any way you want to get started is available either by opening the Access application from the Start menu (Windows 7) or Start screen (Windows 8) or an application icon, or by clicking the File tab once you’ve got a database open.

After you get to working, however, it’s time to use the onscreen tools that don’t appear until you open a database. Read on for a whirlwind tour of the Access workspace, including views and explanations of all the major bells, whistles, and buttons.

Figure 2-4: Open an existing or recently used database.
Figure 2-4: Open an existing or recently used database.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Access Field Types and Uses

A field, you remember, is where your data lives. Each field holds one piece of data, such as Last Name or Batting Average. Because there are so many different kinds of information in the world, Access offers a variety of field types for storing it. In fact, Access puts the following field types at your disposal: Short Text Long Text Number Currency Date & Time Yes/No Lookup & Relationship Rich Text Attachment Hyperlink OLE Object Calculated There’s also an Autonumber field type, which is applied automatically to the first field in a new, blank database. The types just listed are those available for fields you create in addition to that first field — the ones that will contain your data. For now, suffice it to say that the Autonumber field is a field that contains an automatically-generated number so that each record is unique in that it has a unique autonumber, or ID. You get the word about the need for (and ways to create) unique fields later on, in Chapter ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Building a Database in Access

So you’ve read a few posts here at the beginning of the blog, maybe you’ve leafed ahead where I’ve referred to other chapters, and now you feel ready. You want to dive in and start building a database. Keeping in mind my previous advice to take it slowly, you can take a whack at it here. In the following procedure, you set up a new database and then use the Table Wizard to build the first table in the database. Ready? Here we go . . . 1. If Access is not already running, take a moment to start it. Chapter 1 shows you how to do this. In the Access workspace, a series of large template icons appears, below a Search for Online Templates box, accompanied by links to likely searches for templates that store Assets, Business, Contacts, Employee, and so on. 2. Click the Blank Desktop Database icon. A Blank Desktop Database dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 3-1. Figure 3-1: New blank databases need names. Give yours one here. 3. Type a name to replace the generic Databa...
1 comment
Read more

Databases with user forms

When you’re planning your database, consider how the data will be entered: If you’ll be doing the data entry yourself, perhaps you’re comfortable working in a spreadsheet-like environment (known in Access as Datasheet view), where the table is a big grid. You fill it in row by row, and each row is a record. Figure 1-1 shows a table of customers in progress in Datasheet view. You decide: Is it easy to use, or can you picture yourself forgetting to move down a row and entering the wrong stuff in the wrong columns as you enter each record? As you can see, there are more fields than show in the window, so you’d be doing a lot of scrolling to the left and right to use this view. You may want to use a form (shown in Figure 1-2) instead. A form is a specialized interface for data entry, editing, and for viewing your database one record at a time, if Someone else will be handling data entry Typing row after row of data into a big grid seems mind-numbing Figure 1-1: Datasheet view ...
1 comment
Read more