Change Field Captions And Descriptions Access 2013

Change Field Captions And Descriptions:

1. Click the Fields tab. 
   
2. Click the ContactName field. 
3. Click Name & Caption. 
4. In the Enter Field Properties popup window, change the Caption field to Contact Name, and for the Description type Name of company contact. 
5. Click OK. The title for the column is now displayed with a space via the Caption property, and the description will be displayed on the lower left on the status bar. 

TIP: One of the most common field data types to add is Short Text. The default field size is 255 characters (shown on the ribbon below Default Value). If you need only 20 characters, reducing the field size can help prevent you from accidentally storing more information than can be displayed—for example, when you have positioned a field on a form or report to be a specific size. Otherwise, do not worry about making it smaller just to save space.

Creating A Table In Layout View Access 2013

The layout view in Access can be used for tables, forms, and reports, and it enables you to make design changes without using the more complex design view. You can make changes and, at the same time, see how the design will finally look. In layout view, you have less control over detailed choices, but you have a faster and more intuitive interface through which to interact with the table.

In layout view, Access automatically adds a unique AutoNumber primary key, called ID, to your blank table design. After working in the layout view, you can always switch to the design view to refine your choices. 

Create a table:

1. Click the Create tab. 
2. Click Table. 
3. Click the Click To Add drop-down list. 
4. Select a data type. 
   
5. Replace the default caption Field1 with a name for the field. 
6. Click Save. 
7. Provide a name for the table, and click OK. 
   

TIP: At this point, you will find it easier both to close the Field List pane on the right and to switch from the Table Tools tab to the Fields tab, which displays the full set of choices for setting properties on each field.

Creating A Table In Design View Access 2013

Creating tables in design view gives you the greatest control over how the fields and properties are set, but it also involves more work than other techniques. Each field in the table design has a set of properties that you can safely leave at the default values. You can change these properties as you gain a deeper understanding of the product’s features. 

A fantastic feature of Access is that the design view can always be used to modify an existing table structure, regardless of which technique you use to create the table. 

Create a table:

1. Click the Create tab. 
2. Click Table Design. 
3. Type a name in the Field Name column for each field you want—for example, CustomerName. 
4. In the Data Type drop-down list, select a
   
   data type for each field—for example, Short Text. (At the end of this exercise, a table describes the data types that are available.) 
   
5. Click Save. 
6. Provide a name for the table, and click OK. 
7. If you have not created a primary key, you will be prompted to add a key. Click Yes to add a primary key. 
8. After saving your table, the new ID primary key is added to the table. 
9. The table now appears in the navigation pane. 

TIP: Designers sometimes begin table names with a prefix, such as tbl—for example, tblCustomers—to distinguish tables from queries (which are prefixed with qry) when both appear in one list. Having a naming convention is a good idea when you’re creating complex databases. 

TIP: Because there are several different choices here for numbers, you might find it easiest to use a Long Integer for whole numbers and use a Double for numbers with decimal places. 

TIP: If you know which field(s) would make a good choice for a unique primary key, select the fields and click the primary key button. A primary key must be unique for each record in the table and cannot be null (blank). You can use more than one field to create a composite primary key, where each field doesn’t contain unique values, but the combination of fields will always be unique.

Creating A Blank Desktop Database Access 2013

After starting Access as described at the beginning of Section 2, “Creating a custom Web App,” you can use one of the available template databases, or you can create a blank database as described in this section. 

Access offers you the flexibility to use templates of commonly encountered database structures or to start with an empty database into which you can either import existing data or create a solution tailored to your specific needs. 

Create a blank desktop database:

1. Click Blank Desktop Database. 
2. Type a name for your database. 
3. Select a file location in which to save the database. 
   
4. Click Create. 
5. When the new blank database opens in layout view (described later in this section), you will see that Access has created a table called Table1. At this
   
   point, we can close this table without saving any changes to the new table. Click the Close button to close the table. 

TIP: The templates for a desktop application all begin with the word desktop, and you can scroll down the list of templates to see these. Other templates are for creating a Web App.

The following table lists the available data types when you are adding fields to a table in a desktop database.

Data type	Description
Short Text	Text up to 255 characters. In earlier versions of Access, this data type was called Text.
Long Text	Large amounts of text, up to 65,536 characters. In earlier versions of Access, this data type was called Memo.
Number	Field Size property provides for Byte, Integer, Long Integer (default), Single, Double, Replication ID, Decimal.
Date/Time	Date and Time field.
Currency	Currency field.
AutoNumber	Sequential Automatic Number, Long Integer (default).
Yes/No	True/False (default is False).
OLE Object	Can hold images or other documents.
Hyperlink	Hyperlink to the Internet and local documents.
Attachment	Allows multiple documents to be saved.
Calculated	Calculated field.
Lookup	Creates a foreign key lookup.

Working With Reports Access 2013

Although a Web App does not have a reporting feature that can be displayed in a browser window, you can create reports as described in Section 10, “Preparing data to print using reports,” in a desktop database that is linked to the data held in the Web App. 

The first step is to use the Info option on the File menu to create a desktop database that is connected to your data. 

Create a report database:

1. On the File menu, select the Info option and then click Create Reports. 
2. Choose a location, and provide a name for the reporting database. 
3. Click Save. 
   
4. The new reporting database opens, and on the left, you can see a list of the tables that are linked to your Web App. Double-click a table in the navigation pane to display the data.

Modifying The Table Selector Access 2013

In a Web App, you interact with the data by selecting a table from the Table Selector and then selecting an available view associated with the table from a list of available views, called the View Selector. 

Each table in the Table Selector can be modified to rename captions or hide a table caption without affecting the underlying table. This means that the Table Selector works like a main menu for the application, and the View Selector works like a sub-menu. 

Modify the Table Selector to hide or show a table:

1. Click the table in the Table Selector. 
2. Click the Settings/Actions charm. 
3. Select Hide. 
   
4. The table name caption in the Table Selector is now grayed out. 

CAUTION: If an item is deleted, the underlying table will also be deleted. 

TIP: After you hide a table, the table name caption will be grayed out and moved to the bottom of the Table Selector. The table name caption will be hidden when you are viewing results in a browser. 

Change a table icon:

1. Click the formatting charm. 
2. Choose an icon for the Table Selector item. 

TIP: When you change a table name caption, it does not change the name of the actual table but instead changes only the table name displayed on the Table Selector.

Creating A Query Access 2013

A query provides a powerful mechanism for filtering and sort­ing data. It can also be used to bring together data from several tables or other queries in a single presentation. 

Like a table, a query can be opened to display data in the design interface without showing the results in the browser. To display the results in the browser, you need to create a view that uses the query. 

In Section 7, “Modifying data using queries,” we describe how you can create action queries that modify data in a desktop database—for example, updating a set of rows. These action queries are not available in a Web App. 

Create a query:

1. Click Advanced on the Home tab of the ribbon. 
2. Select Query. 
3. From the Show Table Dialog box, select one or more queries or tables from the Show Table dialog box by double-clicking each table. 
   
4. Click Close when you have finished making selections. 
5. Add the fields from the source data into the query grid by double-clicking each field listed in the table. 
6. Click Save. 
   
7. Type a name for the query, and click OK to save it. 
8. Click View. 
9. Select Datasheet View to test the query. 

SEE ALSO: For a detailed explanation of how to construct select queries, see Section 6, “Selecting data using queries.”