Datasheet

Part I: Basic Training

How Access Works and

How You Work with It

When you look at all the applications in Microsoft Office — Word, Excel,

PowerPoint, Outlook, and of course, Access — you’ll see some features that

are consistent throughout the suite. There are big differences, too — and

that’s where books like these come in handy, helping you deal with what’s

different and/or not terribly obvious to a new user.

Access has several features in common with the rest of the applications in

the Microsoft Office suite. You’ll find the same buttons on several of the tabs,

and the Quick Access toolbar (demonstrated in Chapter 2) appears in all the

applications, as do the default items on the menu itself.

If you already know how to open, save, and print in, say, Word, you’re prob-

ably ready to do the same things in Access without any difficulty.

To make sure you’re totally Access-ready, here’s a look at the basic proce-

dures to make sure you have a solid foundation on which to build.

Opening Access

Access opens in any one of several ways. So, like a restaurant with a very

comprehensive menu, some people will love all the choices, and others will

say, “I can’t decide! There are just too many options to choose from!”

Now, you’ll run into situations in which one of the ways is the glaringly best

choice — hands down, that one will be the way to go. But what if you’ve

never heard of it? You’ll be trying to find my phone number (I’m unlisted —

ha!) so you can give me a piece of your mind. So — to acquaint you with all

your choices (so you’ll be ready for any situation) — here are all the ways

you can open Access:

✓ Click the Start menu button (in the lower-left corner of the screen) and

choose All Programs➪Microsoft Office➪Microsoft Access 2010.

Figure 1-10 shows my Start menu. You may notice items on my menu

that don’t match yours — say, programs you may not have — don’t

worry about that. Just focus on the Microsoft Office submenu and make

your choice from that.

If you’ve recently used Access, you’ll see it in the list on the left side of

the Start menu. Just choose Start➪Microsoft Access 2010, and Access

opens.

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