in this lesson we will be creating basic
forms for our database so why do you
need forms well in the last lesson you
saw that one way to get data into your
database is by entering it directly into
the tables that method is fine if you
are already familiar with the database
and the format's that the data should be
in but the other users of your database
may not enter data into the tables
exactly the way you want them to well in
Access you can create a form that your
users can use to populate the table
instead of working directly in the table
itself access forms look a lot like some
of the forms you may have filled out at
the bank or at work or at school with an
Access form you see one record at a time
but in a table you see all the records
at once I've already created two basic
forms the orders form where I'll enter
an order for one customer that is
purchasing a book or books and a
customers form for entering a customer's
information the customers form has a
drop-down list for the state field this
makes it really easy for the user to
enter a valid state abbreviation the
form you'll be creating is the books
form it will be used to enter books as
they come into our store inventory we're
also going to set up a list like the one
in our customers form to make selecting
a book category easy so now let's create
our own form to make data entry easy for
the person entering the new books first
select the table that most closely
relates to the form you want to create
in this case we're going to choose the
books table next click on the create tab
and the form commands in the forms group
this automatically generates a form
based on table contents
it's not the best option since you don't
control what it looks like without
modifying the layout but you can always
go back and change the layout in colors
later so this is the option we're going
with for now plus we want all the fields
from our books table to appear on our
form which this option does
automatically for us there are other
options for creating forms but we'll
talk about that later access
automatically called our form the same
as a table it is based on but you can
rename it whatever you want by saving it
and entering a new name books is just
fine for what we're doing
down here we have our navigation buttons
for our forum I can go to the first
record the previous record the next
record the last record or I can choose
to enter a new blank record in our next
lesson will actually start entering data
in our forum to create new records