Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life
tables are the heart of any database
because they are where the actual
information is stored and we're going to
talk about how to add edit and delete
information from a table in the
navigation pane double-click on the
table that you'd like to open and tables
will be marked with a blue icon next to
the name
if you've used Excel or another
spreadsheet program then you'll probably
find tables to be pretty easy to use and
they are very similar but there are some
different terms that we use when talking
about an access table each row is called
a record in this table every record
contains a customer's name address and
other information each record will have
a unique ID number and this number
cannot be changed
so Jerrod Smith's number will always be
three no matter what each column is
called a field and each field contains a
different type of information for
example here we have fields for the
street address city state and zip code
just like in Excel each box is called a
cell if you want to change the
information in a cell all you have to do
is select it and then type in the new
text and let's say that this customer
has a new email address after you edit a
record you can save it by clicking save
on the Home tab
but whenever you click out of a cell
it's going to automatically save it for
you so if you're making a lot of
different changes you don't have to
worry about saving each record but it is
a good idea to save the last one that
you're working on just to make sure that
you don't lose any changes when you
close the database if you are editing
more than one record you can use the
arrow keys on your keyboard to move
between records or if you prefer you can
use the arrows on the record navigation
bar you can also use the record
navigation bar to create a new record
and then type in the person's
information if you want to delete a
record click the margin on the left side
of the record and then on the Home tab
click the delete command and now
normally you should avoid deleting
records because it can negatively impact
the database if other objects refer to
the record for example if we deleted a
customer's record it could cause the
information in the orders table to be
incomplete but if you're just deleting a
brand-new record then it's generally
okay
for some edits you may want to use the
Find and Replace option to make a lot of
changes at once I'm going to open up the
products table and on the Home tab click
the replace command and let's say that
in some of our seasonal products we want
to change the word fall to autumn type
in the word that you're looking for and
the word that you want it replaced with
and we'll select current document so
it'll search throughout the entire table
and we want to look for matches that
appear in any part of the field click
find next to look for the word and it
looks like the first instance of fall
isn't referring to the season so we'll
skip this one and find the next one
and when you get to one that you want to
change click replace and just go through
each one and decide whether you want to
replace it and generally you don't want
to use replace all because that doesn't
give you the option of skipping any of
them so you should only use this option
if you're absolutely sure that it won't
replace anything that you don't want as
you practice editing tables keep in mind
that most of your changes are saved
automatically so to be safe you may want
to create new records to practice with