Finally, the heart of your Access database is the Navigation Pane.
It shows you what's in the database and makes them easily accessible for you.
A Microsoft Access database is made up of several components including tables, forms,
queries, and reports. These components are called database objects.
One or more of these objects are formed when a database is created.
Let's take a look at the Navigation Pane and see how it works, and then discuss the database
objects. The first thing you'll want to know how to
do is work with the Navigation pane. To open and close the Navigation Pane, just
click the Shutter Bar Button. With the Navigation Pane open you'll see 1
or more groups. You can collapse and expand a group by simply
clicking the down or up double arrows. You can also select the way in which the objects
in the database are displayed in the Navigation Pane.
Just click the drop-down arrow here to see your options.
You can include the creation or modified dates, or display objects as icons or lists.
Let's take a look at Tables. To open a table just click the table icon.
Tables are usually created for specific topics as you can see here we have a table for our
inventory of books. We have columns, or fields, of information
such as title and author. Each row is a record that is comprised of
one or more fields. We'll talk more about fields in another lesson.
Another database object is called a query. A query lets you find and retrieve information
from one or more tables based on a set of search conditions you define by using the
fields in one or more tables. Don't worry, we'll look further into queries
in a later lesson. You can also use forms with your database.
Primarily, people use forms to make data entry to database tables easier.
Instead of entering data directly into a table, a user can use an easy-to-read form.
The final object I want to show you is the report.
A report is an effective way to analyze and present data in a printed format using a specific
layout. You have control over the size and appearance
of information printed on the report, just like you do with Microsoft Word documents.
We will also cover forms and reports in later lessons.
When you're ready to close any of these objects, just notice the tabs to the right of the Navigation
Pane. The highlighted tab is the active tab, and
can be easily closed by clicking the X on the right.
As I said before, if Access looks a little complex to you right now don't panic because
additional lessons will cover each of these objects in greater detail.