Datasheet

Tricks of the Trade: Working with the Field Builder
A great tool for beginning Access users is the Field Builder. It works as a wizard
to help you build your table and also gives you practice selecting data types. In
the Design view, select the column for which you would like to build a field and
click the Build button on the toolbar. In Figure 1-6, you can see what the Field
Builder looks like.
Figure 1-6 The Field Builder utility can help you build your table with just a few
clicks of the mouse.
The Field Builder provides a collection of sample tables, each with their own
sample fields. It is very likely that you will find a field equivalent to what you
would like to create in this list. When you select a field, not only will the name
of the field be added to the Design view of the table, but the suggested data
type will be added for you as well. This can be a great way to teach yourself
about data types. Simply create a dummy table and choose the fields that
interest you or that you might potentially need in the future. Then, after
selecting each item, check to see what data type was automatically populated
in the list. Look at different Number fields and pay attention to different
settings for the Field Size in the Number data type.
Advanced Table Concepts
Now that you can create a table and manually enter data into it, this section
turns to more advanced table concepts. When working with data in tables, you
may encounter situations in which you want to restrict or default data that is
entered in particular columns. There is also the question of being able to
uniquely identify each record in any given table.
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