Concerned about the latest vaccine mandate? QuickClicks Reference Guide Microsoft Access ,,, From savvy shortcuts to expert techniques, this illustrated reference guide will walk you through every click. Read More Easy-to-identify icons help you gain a better understanding of each tip by highlighting important information.
Available Products. We use cookies to provide a personalized site experience. Typically, you will not be using your primary key field, because, again, when you designate a field in Access as a primary key, Access will not allow duplicates to be entered.
We can search by the last name or the first name and the last name, or you can search by their street address, or to be more specific with their telephone number or birthday. The following screen in this wizard will ask for the fields we want to be displayed in our query. For this, hit the double arrow, all of the fields will move over to the additional query fields area, and will be added to our query results.
By default, it's going to name it find duplicates for plus whatever the name of the object that you're querying. In this case, tblAuthors , but you can give it any other name too and click finish. Here, Access has found a possible duplicate, and that's going to be author Jose Caline which has same birthday, same address, same telephone number but different AuthorIDs.
This one has definitely been entered twice by accident. We have now added all of the fields to our query, we could just go and delete the record. We also have to make sure that we don't have any related records in another table.
If you'd like to see how that wizard has created this query, go into the Design View and see what all has been added to this query. As you can see in the above screenshot, we have our fields and some specific criteria underneath the first name field. This is how this wizard is looking for that duplicate information. It is by far the easiest method to find duplicates. The Find Unmatched Query Wizard creates a query that finds records or rows in one table that have no related records in another table.
As we have already discussed how data joins together in queries, and how most queries are looking for the matches between two or more tables. This is the default join in Access, for example, if we design a query with two tables, tblCustomers and tblOrders , and join those two tables by the CustomerIDs, this query will return only the results that match.
In other words, the customers who have placed orders. There are times when we don't want to see the matches, for instance, we may not want to see any customer in our database — the customers who have not placed orders as yet. In our database, we can use it to see which authors have not yet written a project or you could use it to see which employees have not yet elected any health benefits.
Let us now open your database which contains Customers and Orders table; go to the Create tab and click on the query wizard button. In this scenario, we will look out for those customers who have not placed an order. In the first screen it's asking which table or query contains the records you want in the query results. We now want a list of customers from tblCustomers. Select that option and click Next. In the following screen, you need to specify which table or query contains the related records.
In other words, what table are you using to compare with the first one. For this, we need to find the ones that have not placed orders. We need to select the table that contains information on all orders — tblOrders.
Now, click Next. In the following screen, you can pick and choose the fields you want to see displayed in the query results. Let us now select all the available fields and click on the double-headed arrow. This moves all the available fields over to the selected fields area. You can also see how that query was created. For this, you need to go back to the Design View. This is to exclude certain records.
In this case, it is the customers who have placed orders, or who have related information in tblOrders. Forms in Access are like display cases in stores that make it easier to view or get the items that you want. Since forms are objects through which you or other users can add, edit, or display the data stored in your Access desktop database, the design of your form is an important aspect.
There's a lot you can do design-wise with forms in Microsoft Access. There are many types of bound forms you can create in Access. The form is divided into halves, either vertically or horizontally. One half displays a single item or record, and the other half displays a list or provides a datasheet view of multiple records from the underlying data source.
There are a few methods you can use to create forms in Access. For this, open your Database and go to the Create tab. In the Forms group, in the upper right-hand corner you will see the Form Wizard button. On this first screen in the wizard, you can select fields that you want to display on your form, and you can choose from fields from more than one table or a query.
Let us assume we want to simply have a quick form that we are going to use for data entry for our employee information. Click on the double arrow to move all the fields at once. The following screen in the Form Wizard will ask for the layout that we would like for our form. We have columnar, tabular, datasheet and justified layouts. We will choose the columnar layout here and then click Next. In the following screen, we need to give a title for our form.
Let us call it frmEmployees. Once you have given your form a title, you can open the form to see what that form looks like, or you can begin entering information into your table. Or you can choose the option to modify the form's design. Let us choose the first option to open the form to view or enter information and click Finish.
Now, take a look at the following screenshot. This is what your form looks like. This is a single item form, meaning one record is displayed at a time and further down you can see the navigation buttons, which is telling us that this is displaying the record 1 of 9. If you click on that button then, it will move to the next record. If you want to jump to the very last record in that form or that table, you can use the button right beside that right arrow, the arrow with a line after it, that's the last record button.
If you want to add new employee information, go to the end of this records and then after 9 records you will see a blank form where you can begin entering out the new employee's information. This is one example of how you can create a form using the Form Wizard.
Let us now close this form and go to the Create tab. Now we will create a slightly more complicated form using Wizard. Click the Form Wizard and this time, we will choose fields from a couple of different tables. These fields will now move to Selected Fields.
Here, we want to retrieve data from a couple of different objects. We can also choose from options on how we want to arrange our form. If we want to create a flat form, we can choose to arrange by tblTasks , which will create that single form, with all the fields laid out in flat view as shown above.
However, if we want to create a hierarchical form based on that one-to-many relationship, we can choose to arrange our data by tblProjects. In the above window, we have the option to include a subform for tblTasks , or we can make that a linked form. This linked form is where tblProjects will have a button that will launch that second form filtered to the project that we have selected in that underlying projects form.
Let us now select the Form with subform s , and then click Next. In the following screen, you can choose a layout for your subform. The Datasheet View gets selected by default. The Datasheet View is similar to Table View. In the following screen, you need to provide a name for your forms. Enter the name you want and click Finish. Access will give you a preview of what your form looks like.
On top, you have the controls on your main form, which is from our Projects table. As you go down, you will see a subform. It's like a form within a form. You may also want to create a specific kind of form. For this, you can click on the More Forms drop-down menu.
These are typically bound forms; select the object that you would like to be bound to that form. This does not apply to the Modal Dialog forms. To create this type of form, you will need to select the object in navigation pane first. Let us select tblEmployees here. This type of form is divided in equal halves, either vertically or horizontally. One half displays a single item or record, and the other half displays a list or a datasheet view of multiple records from the underlying data source.
Let us now select tblEmployees in the navigation pane and then on Create tab. Select Split Form option from More Forms menu and you will see the following form in which the form is divided vertically. We have learnt several ways to create simple data entry forms. Although the forms ease the process of data entry; these may not serve other purposes that you would want. They may not be catchy or user-friendly for what you have intended. It is merely a generic term used to describe any object on a form or report that displays data, performs actions or items used for decorations such as a line.
In other words, a control is just about anything that is placed on a form or report. We will now look at the different aspects of making a form presentable and understand how to edit and modify a form.
Let us now open our Multiple Items form which lists out all employees from tnlEmployees. As you can see a list of employees, but doesn't really look like a very user friendly list. Our controls are oversized. They are too big, spaced apart and do not provide a very useful list view.
To edit the appearance of your controls on this form, you have two form views that you can use. In the Home tab, click the View drop-down. You have the Layout View or the Design View, and both of these views are used to edit your form. The Form View opens up by default; this is the view you will use to interact with or edit the underlying data source. At the top of Access, you will see an area marked Form Layout Tools with three tabs — Design tab, an Arrange tab, and a Format tab and each of these tabs have different options for formatting the look or appearance of the form.
When you take your mouse and click on any one of these controls, you will notice that Access will highlight a given area of that form and all controls within that area are shaded a light orange whereas the actual control that you select will be shaded darker than the previous one or have a darker orange border around where you click. Here you can resize your controls as you want by clicking and dragging your mouse to resize the height or width or both of that one control.
On this particular form, when you resize any single control, you also change the size of the rest of your controls on your form, this is because of how these controls are grouped. Let us now adjust all the fields the way you want by using the click and drag function of the mouse. That is one quick way of editing the height and width of controls in your form from this Layout View.
In Access, there are some basic ways to format your forms by using built-in themes, colors, and font styles, customizing fill colors and shading alternate rows. Let us now open frmEmployees. The forms that Access creates are plain and simple.
They have a blue bar on the top and a white background. If you want to see how else you can stylize these forms, you can go to the Design View or Layout View and explore some of the options you have on the Design tab in the Themes area.
If you click on the Themes' drop-down gallery, you have many pre-created themes to try out from. Hovering your mouse over any one of them will give you a preview of changing things like colors and font sizes and the actual font used. To apply a particular style, simply click your mouse on it and you can see what that looks like. If you like the theme but you want to change the colors, you can adjust the colors by going back to the Themes group on the Design tab and choosing the color you like.
You can also create custom colors to match your company's colors. Similarly, you also have a series of font styles to choose from. You can choose one from the many that come prebuilt with the Office Suite or you can customize those fonts, choosing a specific heading font, a body font and even creating a custom name for that font group and saving.
Let us go back to frmEmployees. In this form, you will see that every alternate row is shaded light gray. The formatting option is referred to as Alternate Row Color and if you want to adjust that in a multiple form, go to the Design View. Select that detail section and then go to the Format tab and in background group you should see an option for Alternate Row Color. You can change the colors for alternate rows. To see what that looks like, simply go to the Form View or the Layout View.
If you don't want any shading at all, you can choose No Color as your Alternate Row Color and that is more the traditional look from earlier versions of Access. Access includes a Navigation Control that makes it easy to switch between various forms and reports in your database.
A navigation form is simply a form that contains a Navigation Control. Navigation forms are a great addition to any desktop database. We have already used navigation pane to navigate through all of the Access objects we create, such as forms, queries, tables, etc. If you want to create your own navigational structure and make it easier for the users to find the specific objects that they really need, you can build navigation form, which is a form that uses a navigation control so users can use or view forms and reports right from within that main navigation form.
Let us now take a simple example in which we will create the navigation form. For this, go to the Create tab; in the Forms group, you will see this navigation drop-down menu. In this menu, you will see different layouts for how to arrange your forms and reports that you would like to embed on this navigation form. There is one with horizontal tabs, one with vertical tabs — where all the tabs are aligned to the left, a vertical tabs layout where all the tabs are aligned to the right.
There is a horizontal tabs layout that has two levels to it, so if you have a lot of objects that you want to display across the top, you can make use of this.
You can have one where you have both horizontal tabs and vertical tabs, either aligned to the left or to the right. In the following example, we will be using Horizontal Tabs and Vertical Tabs.
To create that layout or that navigation form, simply click on it, and Access will create an unbound form, with a navigation control on it. To add objects to this navigation form, the easiest way to do is through your layout view, by simply dragging and dropping objects to where you want them to appear. Let us now drag frmProjects form from the navigation pane and drop it on the [Add New] on the top.
Similarly, drag frmAuthers form from the navigation pane and drop it to the left of the Add New Button. Now, you will see that your other project buttons have disappeared from the left and that is because they are attached to Project tab. All the buttons you view on the left are linked to whatever you have selected up the top. Now with the Employee tab selected, let us drag employees-related information to the left.
Now we have project information on one tab, employee information on the other. Similarly, you can add more tabs as per your requirements. As you can see that the name of the tabs is not appropriate, so let us start renaming some of these tabs to make them more user-friendly. The easiest way is to double-click on any tab or any button on the left and rename it as shown in the following screenshot. When you enter data in any form, it can be quicker and easier to select a value from a list than to remember a value to type.
A list of choices also helps ensure that the value entered in a field is appropriate. A list control can connect to existing data, or it can display fixed values that you enter when you create the control. In this chapter, we will cover how to create a combo box in Access. A combo box is an object or control which contains a drop-down list of values that the user can select from.
Let us now take a simple example of creating a combo box. We have created a form for an employee as shown in the following screenshot. We now want to create a combo box for Phone type because we know that phone type should be either Home, Cell or Work. This information should be available in the dropdown list and the user need not type this information.
Let us now go to the Design View for this form. Select the Phone Type field and press delete. Let us now select Use Control Wizards option from the Controls menu and then Select the Combo Box Control from the menu as shown in the following screenshot.
Now, draw the combo box where you want and when you release your mouse then you will see the Combo Box Wizard dialog box. Here you have different option for data; let us select the 2 nd option wherein, we will add the values and click Next.
You can see that combo box is created but it is not aligned to other field. Let us do that first by selecting all fields and then go to the Arrange tab. In this chapter, we will be covering the SQL view. Whenever you create a query in query design, Access automatically creates the SQL query for you.
This actually retrieves data from the tables. To see how your query is created in sql when you create it in query design, let us open your database. You can now see all the employee information as query result. To view the SQL, go to the Home tab.
You can see the SQL query which is generated by Access automatically. This helps retrieve data from two tables. One especially useful formatting tool in Access is the ability to apply Conditional Formatting to highlight specific data. Let us take a simple example of conditional formatting.
We have a list of all of the projects in this database and we have also got a couple of new fields like the On Time Status and the Number of Late Tasks. This form is created from another query. In this query, we have a join between a table and a query that will display the count of due dates or how many projects have tasks that are overdue. We also have a calculated field here that uses the IF function to determine whether or not the count of the due date is greater than zero. It will then display the words Late if the project is late or On Time if that specific project does not have any overdue tasks.
In this example, we will be using the above form to understand how you can use Conditional Formatting to highlight specific pieces of information. We will now highlight every single project that is currently running late.
To apply Conditional Formatting to one field or more than one field, we will need to switch over to the Layout view. On that Format tab, you should see a group called Control Formatting and a special button for Conditional Formatting. Let us now click on Conditional Formatting.
You will now see a Conditional Formatting Rules Manager and currently we have no rules applied to this control. Let us now create a new rule by clicking on the New Rule button. You will now see a New Formatting Rule dialog box. We will first specify the type of rule we will be creating and here we have two options. The first option is to check the values in the current record or to use an expression , and the second option is to compare this record with the other records.
We now have only one of two values in our form; either On Time or the word Late and that is from the given query. We can now set our Conditional Formatting, how we want this field to look like if the word Late appears in that field. Let us now change the font color to red and make it bold, italic and underline , and that's our conditional rule. Let us now click Ok and then click Apply , and Ok again. You can see that the word Late is formatted now. This is one example of how to create a very basic conditional format rule.
Let us take another example. Here, we will make the title or the name of the project red and bold, italic and underline. Select the project name control on your form. We will now go back to our Format tab and click on Conditional Formatting and create a new rule for that specific control as shown in the above screenshot. Here, we will not be checking the value of the current field we have selected, but we will be checking it against another field on this form.
Select Expression Is in the first combo box and then click on … button at the end as in the above screenshot. In the Expression Categories, you have every single object that is on this form. Doubleclick on CountofDueDate. This will send the reference to that control or that field up to our expression builder and condition if it is greater than zero. Now, click Ok. Let us now look at another example of conditional formatting. Let us assume, we want to see which projects are more late or have more late tasks than other late projects.
Select the Conditional Formatting option. Let us further change the Bar color to red. We want our shortest bar to represent the lowest value and the longest bar to represent the highest value.
Let us now click Ok and then, click Apply and Ok again. You can now see Conditional Shading applied as in the above screenshot. Let us now go to the Form view. In this chapter, we will be covering Controls and Properties available in Access. We will also learn how to add controls to forms. Controls are the parts of a form or report that you use to enter, edit, or display data.
Controls let you view and work with data in your database application. There are different kinds and types of controls you can create, but all of which will fall into one of the two categories — bound or unbound.
You can create different types of controls in Access. You can use these controls to interact with the data stored in your database, but you can also have unbound text boxes. Calculated controls will perform some kind of calculation based on an expression that you write and that data is not stored anywhere in your database.
Hyperlink creates a hyperlink on your form to something else. It can either be a web page or even another object or place within your database. You can also create a web browser control and navigation control, groups, page breaks, combo boxes. You can create charts, lines, toggle buttons, list boxes, rectangles, check boxes, unbound object frames, attachments, option buttons, subforms and subreports, bound object frames and even place images on your form.
Let us now look at a simple example of some of these controls by creating a new blank form. Go to the Create tab in the forms group and click on Blank Form. On the Property Sheet, click on the drop-down arrow and make sure Form is selected, and then go to the Data tab. On the Data tab, you will see that the Record Source remains blank.
Let us assume, we want to create a form that's going to be tied to two different tables in our database. Creating the content your audience wants and not necessarily what you want to tell them is one of the most consistent.
As noted in this article about how to create more effective customer education content , there are a number of ways to figure out exactly what that is, including online forums, customer surveys, or even from your own technical support staff. Regardless of how you get it, delivering content your customers want and need will go a long way in ensuring the success of your quick-reference materials. Avoid huge blocks of text as much as possible Instead, use visual elements such as screenshots with markup, icons, or product photos — and just enough text to ensure your points are clear.
Keep it to one or two pages. Choose the most important information to accomplish a particular task or that otherwise conveys what you want to show. Boil down complex concepts into their most basic form. Know what to leave in and what to leave out. Remember, you can always create another quick-reference guide to cover other important topics.
Sometimes a simple screenshot annotated with arrows, text, etc. Images draw the eye and help provide anchor points to your content, helping your users quickly and easily identify important points of information. In fact, our Value of Visuals research found that people learn better with images and text vs. You can learn all about how valuable visual communication can be with this awesome infographic. And, have you ever heard the terms a picture is worth a thousand words?
Well, it turns out the best way to show something is to actually SHOW it. A good image can convey a ton of information and help reduce the text density of your content and make it more user-friendly.
Our friends at Venngage have some more information on the importance of visual content. Not all quick-reference guides will be as simple as the one I created. Some will need more text, others will need more images. Some will need more complex layouts. The more you tell us the more we can help.
Can you help us improve? Resolved my issue. Clear instructions. Easy to follow. No jargon. Pictures helped. Didn't match my screen. Incorrect instructions. Too technical. Not enough information.
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