In this lesson we will be creating basic forms for our database.
So why do you need forms? 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 formats 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 paper forms that
you may have filled out at the bank or for 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 person 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. Next click on the Create Tab and the Form
command in the Forms group. This automatically generates a form based
on table content - 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 and colors later
so this is the option we're going with. 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 the 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 form. 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 we'll actually start entering data in our form to create new records.