Term Definition Introduced in:

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1 60 Minutes of Access Secrets Key Terms Term Definition Introduced in: Calculated Field A field that displays the results of a calculation. Introduced in Access 2010, this field allows you to make calculations within a table itself, rather than depending on querys or reports for calculations. Module 1 Database Documenter The Database Documenter creates a report of all the information you need or specify about your database. Module 4 Multivalue Field Multivalued fields allow users to select and store more than one value, or choice, in response to the same question or control. For instance, if several employees are working on the same project, you can store all of their names in the same field. Module 1 Object Dependencies Tool Object Dependencies will list all dependencies between your tables, fields, queries, etc. in your database, helping you identify all linkages. Module 4 ODBC Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standarized protocol that you use to connect databases. Module 2 Relationships Table The Relationships tool shows you how your records are related to one another across tables: One-to-one, One-to-many, or Many-tomany. Module 4 Requery A requery pulls all new data from the underlying table or query, including new additions and deletions. Module 3 Web Database Web databases are deployed on a server running Access Services, a component of SharePoint Server. You can use a web database with a web browser Access is not required unless you want to make design changes. Web databases have some limitations compared to a desktop Access database, but are designed to be easily published to a SharePoint site. Module 1 Glossary Page 1

2 60 MINUTES OF ACCESS SECRETS MODULE ONE BUILDING A DATABASE Male: Module One Building a Database. What we re looking at here is a blank Microsoft Access screen. We re going to start by building a database. You ll see when I click on File, and then I click on New, my first couple of options here are ones that I want to refer to or look at at the moment. These two here Blank Database and then Blank Web Database I want to make sure we understand the distinction between the two because you can get yourself in a little bit of a jam if you re not clear on what these two are. A blank database is a standard Microsoft Access database desktop database. It is meant to be run on a desktop with either the full version of Access installed or the runtime version. The blank web database here, the primary function of that is to be published to SharePoint. You would take that database, you would design it, and you would need to stick with the compatible web structure so that you d then be able to just publish that to Microsoft SharePoint. When it s on SharePoint, it s a fully functional database online. That s important because there are some clear distinctions between the two, which we ll take a look at in a few minutes as we start looking at templates. That s really one of the main areas I want to look at right now. Another well-kept secret is the templates in Microsoft Access. I almost don t like calling them templates because they re more than templates. They re actually, in a lot of ways, full systems. They re a complete application that you could start using right away. So let s take a look at those. They re right here underneath Office Templates. You ll see there are a bunch listed and a bunch of groupings. Let s take a look at one of them. I m going to double click on the contacts here. You ll see it goes to Office.com, it downloads it, and it tells me that I ve Page 1

3 got a couple of different options here: the Call Tracker, Contacts, and the Contact Web Database. You re going to see this a lot. When you re looking at these templates, it s going to be either a non-web database, so it doesn t say web database in it - that would be a standard desktop application - or it says Web. I m going to start with the standard desktop. I m going to double click on this one. It s going to download it, open it, and of course they come up and they give you some tutorials on it or some information about the template and what s in it. I m going to bypass that for right now. Again, if you didn t notice here, this is Enable Content. This is the security system that s built in. I recommend you leave it on. It s just warning you that you had gotten this database from somewhere that is not necessarily trusted. Are you sure you want to enable the content? Because once you enable the content, it is possible for the system to do some damage if it in fact has a virus of some sort in it. So I m going to click Enable. I ll close this out again. You ll see here, I ve got a contact list where I can enter my information. I ve got buttons up here for New Contact, Add from Outlook this is a fully functional system. This can be used as-is right away. And you ll see, how long did it take us to actually build it? It took us 30 seconds, if that. So this is why templates are a great, great resource from the standpoint of either a system ready to use, or you can download it and start building your system off of their system. I ve actually done that quite a bit in the past because if we look at some of the other templates they have here, I m going to click on Projects and the Issues and Tasks. I ve used those two to build on to each other and add things of my own. But now I want to take a look at Issues and Tasks. You ll see Issues Web Database. I m going to double click and open that. I m going to click Enable Content. It wants to give me a user. I actually have to create a Page 2

4 quick user here. You ll see I m in to the system. Again, it s fully functional. This can be published to SharePoint right now. What I want to do is I want to open up my Object bar here. I want you to see our tables. They look different. This is not the normal icon. This is to indicate that this is a web compatible table. You ll see that also with our queries. If you go down, they all have that little world icon. That tells you that it s a web database. The real issue here that I want to make sure you re clear on is this is not a standard table. When I do a right click, notice I do not get the ability to design this table. The only way that I can edit this is to double-click it. It opens. Now if I double-click in my header up here, notice I can modify the name. But that s it. I have very little control. Once this table has been built, I have very, very little control over the design of these fields. It s not like the standard desktop system. So be aware of that. So when you re playing with these templates or using these templates, if you re not going to publish on the web, stick with the desktop versions. If you are going to publish to the web, you have to stay with that. But really understand the limitations that are involved. Now along the same lines as these templates or full systems, they also have something called Application Parts, which is located right here. It s on your Create tab. It s right here, the first icon called Templates Application Parts. In previous versions of Access, they had a table wizard, which you were able to pick off a select list of standardized tables. And it s similar to that. But this actually takes it a step further. If you see, I m going to go to my application parts. I ve got a bunch of blank forms. You see now I have Quick Start, Contacts, Issues, Tasks, and Users. Now, what I find amazing about this is when I click on this, this is not just going to add a table. It s going to add a table, a query, possibly a form. But it also tries to integrate it. How does this link with the Page 3

5 existing data you have in your database? So let s take a look at what happens if I click on this, and I say yes, I want to put in contacts. You can specify a relationship that would be created when issues are imported into the new template - one comment to many contacts; or one contact to many comments. That s the one we want. So we re going to select that one. Or I could have gone with no relationship at all. You ll see field from contacts is addressed. What I m going to do is select the field that s going to link in here. I m going to select the ID field from contacts. I m going to have none. And the field that I want to have a lookup column is field one. I m going to call it ID2. And you ll see that it imported. Now I have a contacts table. If I take a look, let s take a look at these tables. We said there would be multiple comments to individual contacts. When I open up contacts, I have an ID field. When I open up comments, I have an ID field, and then remember we said let s call it the ID2 field? So the ID2 field is what s going to link to my Contacts ID field. So the system created my table for me. It created a query. And it created forms and also created a relationship between them all. So you ll see, it s a lot more now than just simply adding a wizard table. It does so much more for you. We ve looked at, again, standard versus web database; we looked at templates using full systems; then we looked at the application parts. One last thing I want to take a look at is that for 2010, we actually have two new field types. One is called Calculated and one is called a Lookup Wizard or Multivalued field. The calculated field is defined as a field that displays the results of a calculation. That makes sense, right? The calculation must refer to other fields in the same table. Inside one table, I can create a field that calculates a value from fields in that same table. It can t be from other tables. It has to be from inside that same table. Let s take a quick look at that. I had picked a Page 4

6 web database. So I need to get out of that web database for me to be able to play around with the table. So I m going to open up a blank database. I m going to throw a table in. I added a couple of quick fields in here for quantity and price. Let s create a field. We re going to call it calculated. It brings me up a wizard. Now what I m going to do is select Quantity, multiplied by, I called it prints instead of price, but that ll work. And I click Okay. Now that field is going to multiply those two. So when I look in here, I m going to say I have a two quantity and the price is 25. You ll see my calculated field actually will do the math for me. In previous versions, you did either in the query or in the formal report. You did not do this in the table. Now you can do it in the table as well as in the form report and the query. Now to the Lookup Wizard Multivalue. Let s go back to design view. This will actually allow you to select multiple values. What they actually create is a table inside of a table. So when I do a lookup, I m not going to look it up to anything else because I don t have anything else. So I m going to say I ll type in the values I want. I m just going to put in here Test One, Test Two, and Test Three. I ll click Next. We ll call multivalue limit to list, and finish. What you ll see now is that when I save this, when I come to multivalued, and by selecting more than one value, it stores both in there. This keeps us from having to create linking tables so that you can specify three different items going with one record. So that s it for our new field types. [End of recording.] Page 5

7 60 MINUTES OF ACCESS SECRETS MODULE TWO WORKING WITH EXTERNAL DATA Male: Module Two Working With External Data. We re going to start by looking at importing data into Microsoft Access. What I ve got open here is a blank database with just a couple of tables in it. What I m going to do is I m going to select the external tab here. And I m going to start by working with the Excel import. Notice this grouping here is my Import and Link. And this one here is my Export. We re going to working with Import and Link starting with Excel. Watch when I click on Excel. It s going to ask me for the file name. I m going to do a browse and find the file that I m interested in. But, I want to look at these options down here. My first option is import the source data into a table in the current database. That basically just means go grab the data and create a brand new table to house it, and throw all the data into that table. Now my second option here is append a copy of the records to the table. And it gives me the chance to pick the table. So what that means is go out, grab the data, pull it in, but stick it in to one of the existing tables that I have. That is actually a very strong feature. But keep in mind, you ve got to be able to match the fields up. You ve got to be able to say this field matches that field. So be aware of that. If the data you re importing is not exactly the same as the table you re putting it into, you then have to start linking fields. You ve got to make sure that they re the same type of data fields, otherwise you ll run into problems. The other thing that we re going to take a look at in a little bit is link to the data source by creating a linked table. This is very common with databases. I want to link to another access database. I want to link to a SQL server, or an Oracle server anything that s ODBC complaint, you can link a table to that source. What a lot of Page 1

8 people don t know is you can link to Excel. I m going to talk a little bit more about that in a little bit. But we re going to start here with import the source data into a new table in the current database. I m going to click okay. And I m going to go grab some data here to pull in and import into Access. I ll click Next. First row contains column headings. Notice what happens here when I uncheck this. The first row says First, Last that s the name of my fields. When I click on this, it makes them the field headings. So if you have that, you certainly want it. And your field options, this gives you the ability to change how Microsoft notice how all of these are text. What I m looking at right here is data type > text. When I get to the third one over here, it says currency. It interpreted that this is in fact money and not just text. So I m going to click Next. I m going to let Microsoft Access give me a primary key. Again, remember our tables must have primary keys if we re going to want to build relationships on them. We need to have a way to say that this is a unique record. We ll click Next. Now I m going to change the name because I already have one in there. So I m going to call that A. I m going to click on Finish. And then it asks me, do you want to save your import steps? This is actually great because if you do the same thing each time - you find a specific Excel file or a specific table in a database - and you re going to do that exact same routine repetitively, you can save your steps so that you don t have to do it again. I ll call this A as well. And I can give it a description and say Save Import. Notice down here, which I think is really neat, the Create Outlook Task. It will actually create a to-do item in your Outlook to tell you to go and import this data. So I m going to click on Save, and to see where that is, we were working up here in external data, import and link. And there it s saved in Imports. When I click on that, you ll see the saved import I just Page 2

9 did, which is the A. And this is one from earlier. So if I were to click on that, it would try and do the exact same process all over again. So I m going to click on it and click Run. It says I m going to override an existing table because I m telling it go ahead, grab the data, insert it, go ahead and put it in the exact same table name I have there. I click Yes. And I m done. So this is a very, very convenient feature. Your file name needs to be the same each time. Otherwise it will have a hard time finding the file, or it will import an old file every time. Okay, so now we did the import. We just created a brand new table. What we re going to do now is we re going to work on doing an import. But we re going to import the data into an existing. So we re going to use this second option here, append a copy of the Records To table, and I m going to use that table. That s fine. Let me go find my file again. We ll click Okay. Let me just make sure I m grabbing the right information. I m going to duplicate our data. It s got the headers already selected. Import to table. That s great. I click Finish. I can save it and I m done. I can show you if I double click on this, you will see now I have 28 records where originally I only had 14. So that s how we do our append. It didn t ask me a whole lot of questions because the field names were the same. So it did the linking for me. And what I want to do now is I want to look at linking to data. I think this is one of the things that not too many people utilize. Again, we can link to other ODBC. I want to show you right here, I can link to another Access database. I can link to an ODBC compliant database. And it s the same procedure I m going to do right now with Excel, but I m going to demonstrate Excel because I know there s a lot of people who keep a lot of data in Excel. And people edit data constantly in Excel. So rather than write a database and give them a whole front end for it, they re used to using Excel. Let them do their work in Page 3

10 Excel. I can go link to it and pull that data in when I want it. Now the difference between linking and importing is that importing pulls it in once and done. That s it. The data is in your database and it s never going to look for updates unless I go do another import. And when I do another import, it s not going to update my records. It s either going to create a whole new table like we did before, or it s going to append to an existing table. But it will not update my records. Linking is when I open that table, I should see the latest information. You will see everything that has been modified. So I m going to click on Excel. This time I m going to say link to the data source. Go and grab the same file, click Open, click Okay. I m going to do the same thing. I m going to use that import to Access. I ll click Next. First column, click Next, and link to table. I m going to call this Link. Notice I have a different icon over here. This is the standard table icon. This is telling me that I m linked. That s what that arrow means. And then the Excel icon tells me that I m linked to Excel. When I open up this table, you ll see Tyrone Anderson. Let s open up that file. This is the file we imported. It s the file that we linked to. What I m going to do is I m going to change it from Tyrone Anderson to Tyrone Jones. I m going to enable content, and I m going to save it. Now that file is saved. So it s just like one of my staff members had updated the file. And now what you re going to see is that when I look at my import, it still says Tyrone Anderson. But when I look at my link, it now says Tyrone Jones. See that? Now with this linked to the Excel database, I can still use this table in queries, forms, reports I can use this any way I use a regular table because Access sees it as a regular table with fields. This can be a very, very powerful thing because you can allow your users, you can allow your staff members to continue to do what they re doing in Excel, and then link their data in Page 4

11 and then you can build all your reports, your forms everything that you need from there. One last thing I want to take a look at before we get off this subject is Export. They have added into the newer versions the ability to export to PDF or XPS. These are standard formats that are making it a lot easier to be able to print these documents. Anybody who knows Access from the old days, one of the problems we did have was you could not get reports out into, well, sharable format. They didn t have access to Access to run the report. It was very difficult to save it in a format and then get it and then mail it to somebody. So now we have the ability to send it right to a PDF. I can do that right here looking at this, click on Export. You ll see all it does is ask me to give it a name. We call it Export. And you ll see I can select either PDF or XPS. I m going to select PDF. I ve got a few options here. Not many. A few different options if I wanted to select them. Then I click Publish. Again, I can save my steps. There s my document in a PDF. So we have the ability to import, which is pretty common. So you can import it into a table or append it to an existing. The other thing is rather than importing it, should we be linking our data? If we link it, then we get dynamic updates, unless we just looked at our ability to export to PDFs or XPSs. Okay. Let s move on now. [End of recording.] Page 5

12 60 MINUTES OF ACCESS SECRETS MODULE THREE FORMS AND MISCELLANEOUS Male: Module Three Forms and Miscellaneous. What I want to do is I want to show you something that seems to come up quite a bit, which is: how do I filter my form using a field at the top? Let s take a look. I ve got a couple of forms here. I ve got Staff, and I ve got a query. So my staff form is built on my staff query. My staff query is just getting information out of this table. So I m going to show you, when I click on Staff, you ll see I ve got a multi-record form. It shows me all my records. It s similar to Datasheet View. What I get asked a lot is: you know, I ve only got 14 records in here, but some databases have quite a few records. A lot of times, people will ask how can I, up here at the top, put a field in so that I can limit the view below to just the value I select in this field? So I m going to show you how to do that. We re going to walk through that step by step. So in order to add that field up top so that I can filter what s below, the first thing I need to do is know where to get this list of items from. What we re going to filter on here is department. In order for me to get a nice, quick list of departments, rather than have to type them myself I m going to create a new query Query Design. I m going to use this table. And I m just going to select Just Department, and I m going to group it. You ll see now what I ve done, just by adding the department field and grouping it, when I click View, all I see is just the unique departments that are in the table. So you ll see that all I see are the unique departments that are in this data. So I m going to go ahead and I m going to save that. We re going to call that Department Look Up. So now when I come back to my staff form, and I go to Design View, I m going to add in from my controls a combo box. I m going to say I want the Page 1

13 combo box. I ll select the first option, which is the Get it from a table or query. When I click Next, I m going to select the Queries and the Department Look Up. And I m going to add departments, the only one I m going to look for. And I m going to sort it by department so that it goes alphabetical. And that s it. I m going to click Finish. So now what you re going to see, though, is when I view my table, I now have a dropdown, which is a little small. I ve got to make that a little bigger. But when I select it, nothing happens down here. And the reason for that is I haven t modified my query. I need to tell my query to look to that field there and filter my records based on it. So let s go back to Design View. Let s first of all make this a little bigger before we forget. More importantly, though, we need to look at the exact name of this field. And the name is not unbound. So we re going to click on Property Sheet, which is over here to the right. Go to Property Sheet, click All, and there s the name of it Combo 22. I m going change that just so it s easier and call it Department Lookup. I m going to save my form. Now I m going to come back to now my staff query. I m going to design that. What I m going to say here is very simply in the department criteria, I m going to type in Forms! And you ll see, it starts to pull up. I ve got a form here called Staff. And then I m going to do exclamation point, and it s going to give me the fields that I can put in. I m looking for Department Lookup, right there. This is what it looks like now. That s my formula. So when it runs this query, it s going to look for the form Staff and look for the value that s in Department Lookup. And it will utilize that. We re going to save that. And you ll see it s not going to work. Or if it works, it will work once. The reason for that is you need to actually tell the system, I need you to requery this data now. Because it queries it when it opens. But unless I tell it to requery, it won t automatically requery it. Page 2

14 There are a couple of ways to do this. I have to admit I have a personal preference. I like to use a macro to do the requery. I feel like I have just a little bit more control. So I m going to click on Macro here. And I m going to select here very simple they have an option in here called Requery. That s the one I m going to select. The Requery command, you will see, has some options. It has Control Name. There is no reason to put a control name in here because if no control name is entered, it will just requery the underlining query that s attached to wherever this macro is being run. So if I m running this off of my form, it will requery the query that is based on that form. So I don t have to put a value in there. So now I m just going to save this. I m going to exit out when it asks me to save it. I m going to say yes, and I m going to say Department Look Up. Now what I m going to do is go back to Design View. I m not going to put a button. I m going to put something a little bit more elegant. You ll see here Events. I m going to say, For this field, after update, Department Lookup macro. Now you ll see that when I go to full view and I select something, now it works. So what we need to make this work is you need to base your form on a query. You need to then, inside that query, specify that the criterion is going to be a field on the form. And then you need to build that field and tell the field to automatically requery after you ve updated that field. Let s move on to conditional formatting. This has been available in Excel and is relatively new to Access. So let s take a look at what we can do with some conditional formatting. I ve got a form here very similar to the one we were just using. But this one is showing me all my data. I don t have that filtering field up top. And what I want to do is I want to put some conditional formatting on this information. I think the best way to do this is to be in Layout View, which is what we re in right now. In Layout View, you ll see up top we Page 3

15 have our form layout tools Design, Arrange, and Format. We re going to select our Format option. You ll see we have the same icon here or the same button as we have in Excel the conditional formatting. Now the conditional formatting in Access is a little more it s just a little bit more of a challenge. It s not as user-friendly and as easy as it is in Excel. Okay, so now let s create a rule. The way we create a rule is, up on top it says Show formatting rules for position. I m not worried about position. I want to work with salary. Switching fields will lose rule changes. That s fine. Continue and discard changes. That s fine. So what I m going to do is I want to look at salary and find out everybody, or highlight everybody making more than $50,000. So I m going to create a new rule. Field value is greater than $50,000. And I want it yellow and red. And I want to make it bold as well. Click Okay. When I click Apply, you will see now that the fields for anybody making over $50,000 are now highlighted. So I m going to delete that rule, because I want to show you something else. They have conditional formatting that allows you to compare the data. What I mean by that is let s take a look at New Rule. You ll see earlier, we just took Check value in the current record or Use an expression. Now we re going to say Compare to other records. You ll see when I say compare to other records, it allows me to show a bar. The shortest bar has the lowest value and the longest bar has the highest value. We can change the different colors. I m just going to make this blue. I m going to click Okay and click Apply. You see now, it doesn t show me an actual salary. But it shows me the salary or the bar based in relation to everything else. So this is the lowest salary, and this is the largest salary. And then everything is some gradient in between. Let s go back to conditional formatting. Let s edit that rule. What I did is I had clicked on Show bar only. When I Page 4

16 take that off, you ll see that the number displays as well. So you can actually show just the bar. That way if it was in fact really salaries, you could print this with the bar moving up and down so it won t show everybody s exact salaries; it will just show what the relationship is between each person s salary. So these conditional formattings, you know, they re not as extensive as Excel. But they are pretty powerful. And they re new to Access. And I would say take advantage of them, because this can add some real life to your reports. Okay, let s move on now. [End of recording.] Page 5

17 60 MINUTES OF ACCESS SECRETS MODULE FOUR DATABASE TOOLS Male: Module Four Database Tools. First we re going to look at here under Database Tools, which is one of our tabs, we re going to select Relationships. I m a very big proponent of building these relationships. Do you have to? No, you do not have to build a relationship table. Now what you ll see, this has already been developed. I didn t do this. This was just a simple inventory template. So I used a template, I used an inventory template to build this database, and I ve done no custom work at all. So when I click on relationships, you ll see the relationships are already in here. And this is one of the reasons why I am a very big proponent of doing this, because once you build this relationship table here whether it be a week later, a month later, six months later, or a year later and you need to work on this database again, and you don t exactly remember how everything fit together even though you built it, after you ve built it and a lot of time goes by, even sometimes if just a little bit of time goes by, you forget how everything links together. So when you build this, it benefits you in the fact that Microsoft understands better how these things link together and will actually help you when you build forms and reports because Microsoft can make assumptions based on these relationships. But it also is a great tool for you to have when you need to go back to this and you need to make changes to it. And it s a lot easier to make changes when you know how everything relates to each other. This is a database based on the inventory template. What does this relationship model here tell me? Notice the symbols here one and infinity. So it means this is a one to many relationship. So for every employee, there can be many inventory transactions. You ll notice it s likewise for an Page 1

18 inventory item, for one inventory item, there can be many inventory transactions. The same thing here with Transaction Types one to many. Then you ll see here, Suppliers, which I actually would prefer to put over this way, is one to many. In other words, one supplier has many inventory items. One inventory can have many inventory transactions. So this is how my database is structured and these are the relationships. Again, do you need it? No. You do not have to build this to build an Access database. But it will help you tremendously in many different ways, including being able to go back and understand what you built, later. So I strongly encourage you to use this with every database that you build. Okay, we re going to close this out. Do I want to save it? Yes. And what I want to look at now is my Object Dependencies. You ll see in this box right here Show objects in the database that use selected objects such as queries that rely on specific tables or tables that rely on other tables. Basically what s dependent on what? What can t do anything without another? So let s take a look at that. I m going to click on it. You ll see the first thing it s going to tell me is dependency information needs to be updated before you can view the object dependencies. It s going to take several minutes. I m going to click Okay and give it a chance to run. It s done, and you ll see here on the right hand side, I have my Object Dependency Bar. And you ll see here are my tables. Here s my table inventory. Just keep an eye over here. Table inventory, and when I click on the plus sign, you ll see for this table inventory, all of these items are dependent on that table. You ll see we have reports, forms, queries, and other tables. So this shows you what your dependencies are. So any changes to this inventory table will impact all of these. What you re looking at, though, is up top here Table Employees - Objects that depend on me. I ve selected that. See, I have Page 2

19 the employee s table selected. So now if I click on this button here, now you re looking at the objects that I depend on. The employees depend on these objects. I m going to click on Inventory, then click on Object Dependencies. You ll see now my object dependencies say Table Inventory. I can pick objects that depend on me, and objects that I depend on. So this can be a very, very useful tool again, to find out how the different tables, queries, reports, and forms how they re interdependent. This will help you be able to decipher your database, especially if it s somebody else s and you re trying to understand what they built, and they happened to not build a relationship. So that s how we use our object dependencies. The next thing we re going to take a look at here is Database Documenter. So Database Documenter, you ll see here when I click on it, I get this option here. It gives me all of my tables, queries, forms. I have different tabs for all my different objects as well as all object types here and the current database. What it enables me to do here is I can select which items I want documentation on. I m going to select a bunch. Modules, current databases, see here I can see on my current database, I can actually select my relationships. And that s good. So I want to click Okay. And you ll see, it s going to build me a PDF with all the information. And you ll see, it s going to build me a report with all the information. Now it s quite a large report. You ll see that it is in fact 92 pages of information. You ll see here at the end of our report, this is our relationships model. This is all the information all the properties on all your different object types. Here s our collect statement for a query. So you ll see it has all the information for this database. You re going to print this out for every database, for every table, for every query. That can be quite extensive. The key is it s here. If you need to get to details for any table or anything Page 3

20 like that, it s available to you. Now let s move on. The last thing I m going to take a look at in our Database Tools is this here Access Database. Notice you go from one database cylinder to two. The question is: why would I want to do that? Well, they call it Access Database. What it really is is splitting the database. What it does, it splits your database between one file that has all your tables, and one file has your queries, your forms, your reports, your macros, things like that. Basically what does it do? It splits your front-end application from your data. That s why you d want to do this. When I click on this, you ll see it gives me the option to split the database. Now it s giving me my file name is Inventory BE for Back End. I click on Split. My database has now been split. So you ll see right there it has created a file called Inventory BE. That is going to be your data only. If I look at my database now, notice that my tables have an arrow. Those arrows indicate that they are linked. All I ve really done is now put all my data into a separate Access file and linked my structure to those Access database files. You might want to do this to provide an extra level of security by storing your data in a different location. That s why we want to split our database and that is how to split our database. Okay, that s it for Database Tools. Let s move on. [End of recording.] Page 4

21 60 MINUTES OF ACCESS SECRETS MODULE FIVE NAVIGATION PANE Male: Module Five Navigation Pane. We re going to take a look now at the Navigation Pane, which is right over here. In previous versions it was called the Database Window, and is now called the Navigation Pane. It s called the Navigation Pane because they have done a good amount of work to it. I believe it was started in 07 and it s also available in This can be used not just as a database window for the developers, but it now can be used as a navigation window for individual users. So if we were to build an application, we don t necessarily need to use the navigation window. If you go to Create, you ll see that Microsoft has built in here a navigation form for us to build sort of a menu system for our application. We don t necessarily need to use that anymore. We can use this as our navigation. So to utilize this as our navigation, the first thing we want to look at is what is built in from the minute you turn it on? And you have the ability to do a search for objects. It starts by saying all Access objects. So these are all the objects that are going to be listed in this Navigation Pane your tables, your queries, your forms, your reports, and, then at the bottom, your macros. If I want to clear this up a little bit, I ve got a dropdown arrow right here. So let s take a look at first what this dropdown arrow will do for us. When we do that, you will see that I get a menu. And here Navigate to category inventory navigation. This one here is custom. I will explain that and show you how to build your own in a few minutes. But you ll see here, what I have here is object type. That means it s going to sort it by object type. I could also sort it by table and related views, or I can then start listing it out by the created date or by the modified date. Also down here, I have Filter by group. So if I were to select Page 1

22 Tables here, it would only show me my tables. So it s doing a filter for us. Right now what I have selected is All Access Objects. Again, if I were to select one of these, it would limit it to just the selection that I ve made. So let s take a quick look at that. So if I were to come here and say Tables, you ll notice that I only now see my tables. Likewise if I were to select Reports. You ll see here again, we ve still got Object Type listed, which means it s still breaking it down and sorting it by object, which is most obvious when I do All Access Objects. Let s say I say Created date. You ll see now it s listed by date of creation. It looks about the same. But we really don t know for sure. What we can do is change our view to see some more information specifically the created date and the modified date. But you know what? We ll take a look at that in just a few minutes. I just want to finish up with this grouping here Table and Related Views. So that s the way it s set up right now, and that s the way it comes right out of the box, ready to start using. I m going to go back to Object Type. I still have All Access. Now what I want to do is I want to take a look right next to it, is this little arrow here. That will collapse down the Navigation Pane. So when I click on that, the Navigation Pane goes away. But you ll still see it s still available right here. And I just click on the arrows going the other way and it opens it back up. Now let s take a look at some of the customization I have available in this. When I do a right click on here, you ll see I have my category, so similar to those dropdowns. I now have the category and I can decide which category I want. These again should look very familiar because we were just talking about those. Same thing Sort By is going to have the same effect. You ll see here Sort ascending or descending. Again, you see the same types that we ve talked about. Let s do here, point here again, right mouse-click again. Then we Page 2

23 have our View By. Remember we discussed earlier that we can see more details? Well, there it is. I have either List, Icon, or Details. Let s just take a quick look at those. You ll see Icon just makes the icons bigger. That s really all it is. But if I go to Detail, you ll see now each object has my created date and my modified date. I find that becomes useful when you re looking for a specific object that you know you worked on yesterday. And if you happen to have a lot of objects in your database, it might work out best. The other option too, in a scenario like that, is the Search feature here. This Search feature allows you to type in the name of an object. We re going to type in Suppliers. You ll see it starts to reduce everything down, information as I m typing. So as I typed in Sup, it limited it to just Suppliers, just Suppliers extended, and then you ll see a form, Inventory, Current Stock By, Suppliers. Then here s an Inventory Supplier Items. We re going to get rid of that filter. Now let s get into some of the options that we have. Right click on that. Again right here, we now have our Navigation Options. We click, do a right mouse-click. Navigation Options. We now have the Navigation Options dialogue box. This here is a custom item that was put in. I m going to show you how to create that in just a minute. Here are your Object Type, your Table, and Related Views. On the right here so these are your categories. To the right are your groups. And these are the groups that are available in that category. You ll see as I switch to Object Type, you ll see this window here changes as well as Inventory Navigation this window changes even more because these are custom. So let s start out over here, and let s add in a category. So I m going to add an item. And we re just going to call this Test. Then click Okay. So now I have this. On the right hand side, it starts immediately with one group called Unassigned Objects. Everything starts in that Page 3

24 grouping. If I want to build my own custom groupings, I just need to click on this button right here, Add Group. And when I do that, I get the ability to put in a test group. We ll call that Test Group Number One. Then I m going to add another one. We re going to call that Test Group Number Two. So now I have my test category with my two test groups and my unassigned group. Notice I have checkmarks here. These checkmarks indicate whether or not I want that group to be displayed when someone selects the test category. And I have that on Inventory Navigation. I have it on all of them. So what I m going to do, we re going to work with Test Category. But I m going to start with Object Type here. What I m going to do is I m going to say, you know what? When someone selects Object Type, I don t want them to be able to see macros or modules. So I m going to uncheck those. So now, when I select Object Type in a few minutes, I will no longer see my macros or my modules. So let me show you what we ve done so far. Let me click Okay. And I m going to put this back to the standard view of List. Now I m going to select Object Type. You ll see now when I scroll down, there are no macros left here at the bottom. Remember earlier, we had macros. There are none now because I have now essentially hidden them. Now I m going to go back into my Navigation Options again. My object type, I have Macros unchecked. But look down here Display Options Show hidden objects. But this one, Show hidden objects, I just hid macros. Well what if I want those hidden macros to show up? Why would I want both? It s very simple. If I have unchecked it over here, it means I can t select it. It s unavailable. But if I say show it, it will show the macro, but it will show it grayed out. So I m going to click Show and click Okay. You will now see when I go to the bottom, I have my macros category, but the filter the macro that s in there is grayed out. So I Page 4

25 can t select it, but I know it s there. So that s what you can do with those checkmarks, is hide it or you can make it unavailable but still make it show up. So now our test category, let s go back to that. One thing I wanted to quick mention that I didn t mention before Open Objects With. See here? So you can make it so you don t have to double click on an object. You can just do a single click. That s a matter of just preference. All right, so let s take a look now at our test category, which is right there Test Cat. When I select Test Cat, you will see now I have Test Group One, Test Group Two, and then everything is unassigned. This is where I now need to do my work and assign my objects into these test groups. The way to do that is if I right-click on Employee Table, I can say here Add to Group. See what I m doing down here? Add to Group. And I m going to add it to group Test One, or to Test Group One. I m going to add that to Test Group One. Now I m going to add suppliers to Test Group Two. If I come down, I m just going to add a couple of these items as well. So now you see in Test Group One, I ve got Employees, and then I ve got my Forms, Employee Detail, and Employee List. In Test Group Two, I have Suppliers, Supplier Detail, and Supplier List. Let s say that this category is something I want to give to my users the people utilizing my application. But I don t want them to see all the unassigned. This is just for people who are going to enter in employees and enter in suppliers. So all I need to do is right click Navigation Options, Test Category, take off Unassigned, and uncheck Show Hidden because I don t want them to see it at all. There s no reason for them to see it. So when I click Okay, you will now see the only things they have access to are Test Group One and Test Group Two. All the unassigned are gone. So now we can use this without creating a navigation form. But again, this is much quicker and it s built right in. Page 5

26 And then here, the search bar, I can turn that off. Just by clicking on that, it turns it on. Right mouse click, click on it, turns it off. So you can also get rid of your search bar if you don t want that there. Navigation Options, we discussed our categories. We discussed our groups. We discussed what Show Options, Show Hidden Objects means, what Show Search Bar is. We ve gone through the Open Objects with a single or double click. And we also discussed what these checkmarks would do. So that is our module five, Utilizing Navigation Pane. [End of recording.] Page 6