Access 2007 Introduction

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Welcome to an introduction to Access 2007. Access 2007 is a database program. A database collects and organizes data, facts about people, events, things, or ideas related to a particular topic or purpose. The first step in creating a new database from data is that you already have to plan your database on paper. Determine what information you want to track and then ask yourself what questions should this database be able to answer for me. For example, in the software seminar database, the questions that could be asked may include how many instructors and students are there. Which and how many students live in San Diego? Is an instructor or student listed more than once? Which and how many students have a balanced ODE? There are a couple of methods in creating a new access database. You can create a new database using a template. That is a pre-formatted database designed for a specific purpose. Or you can create a new blank database. A blank database has no data and has no database tools. You create the data and the tools as you need them. Now let's open the access program and when we do we see the following window. At this point I'm showing you a slide of that window to explain a few of its features. The first is the office button. This is common to all Microsoft Office 2007 programs. Word, Excel, Access of course, PowerPoint and so on. Also common is the quick access toolbar. This is the getting started area which will be different for various programs. But this is the started area, getting started area for Microsoft Access. Common title bar. Program level buttons for minimizing, restoring and closing. Common to all the programs. A help button also common to programs. What's unique to access is a list of pre-opened or most recently opened databases. And on this side we have the template categories. And here we have the blank database button. The template categories are listed here. We can start the blank database with this button here. And down at the bottom is just a feature about what's new in Access 2007. It's called the spotlight. From this Access starting point you can open an existing database, start a new database or begin a new database from one of the available database templates. Let's create a new database called contact information and add the tools and the data to it. We'll click on that. We'll click on new. And down here in the lower right hand corner is the file name. We'll give it the name contact information. And we'll click create. And you can see up in the title bar contact information. Database Access 2007 is noted. After the database is created access opens a table named Table 1. So we can see on the tab here Table 1 and over here in the navigation pane the name Table 1. A table is the access object that stores your data organized in an arrangement of columns and rows. An object is the term used to refer to the parts of the database that you will use to store and work with your data. Table objects are the foundation of your access database because tables store the actual data. The following figure shows the elements of the access window when a table object is about to be created. Again I'm showing you a slide of the view that you've just recently seen. And on this slide we have a ribbon with common groups arranged in the tables. That's what's new to the Office 2007 is the ribbon, a new interface. On the ribbon there are tabs and what's highlighted here is a tab data sheet that's underneath another tab called table tools. So these are the table tools for working with tables. Again a title bar, the object window which is this entire window, and then a tab that is in that window. In this case this tab is showing Table 1. It's not populated at this point but it's the starting point. Then we have commands for group names that's up on our ribbon. Each of these is a group like views group, fielding columns group and so forth. Four groups are shown in this window. And then this is the navigation pane. Lots of information is included in this pane and as we progress through the course you'll see this become populated more. Down at the bottom we have a status bar which tells us that we're looking at the data sheet view of our table. These are navigation buttons down here where we'll see more of in the future.