Datasheet

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

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 items on the menu.

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

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

To make sure you’re totally Access-ready, here are the basic procedures to

make sure that 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 things to choose from!” Of

course, the multiple ways to open Access aren’t designed to suit any diner’s

palate, but to accommodate all the different situations Access users find

themselves in.

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 that you

can open Access:

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

choose All Programs

➪Microsoft Office➪Microsoft Office Access 2007.

Figure 1-6 shows my Start menu. I have a lot of programs, many of which

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, it’s listed on the left side of the Start

menu (see Figure 1-7). Just choose Start

➪Microsoft Office Access 2007,

and Access opens.

Part I: Basic Training

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