The Access Interface, Views, and Backstage

Quick reference

• 00:00 In this lesson, we're going to take a quick whiz around the access interface so
• 00:07 that you're familiar with what all parts of the screen do.
• 00:13 Now, we currently still have the tech sales ticketing database open.
• 00:16 So I'm just simply going to close this down, and what we're going to
• 00:21 do is reopen from our recent list the contacts database template.
• 00:27 Let's click on Enable Content and take a walk through the interface.
• 00:30 Now, the first thing you have at the top of the screen are all of these
• 00:34 different tabs.
• 00:35 And each tab is basically what we refer to as a ribbon.
• 00:40 And ribbons contain commands organized into different groups which will
• 00:45 help you execute different commands in your database.
• 00:49 And all of the commands are categorized onto ribbons in a logical fashion.
• 00:53 On the Home tab, in general, we have the most popular tools,
• 00:56 things that you're going to use all the time.
• 00:59 If we want to create something, whether it's a table or a query or a form or
• 01:04 a report, we would use the Create tab for that.
• 01:07 If we want to import data maybe from an external
• 01:10 file we would go to the External Data tab.
• 01:12 And we're going to find all of our database tools,
• 01:15 such as creating relationships between tables, on the database tools tab.
• 01:20 And then finally we have a Help tab which gives us easy access to training and
• 01:25 help files.
• 01:26 What you'll also notice is that for some of these groups, for
• 01:30 example, the text formatting group on the end here,
• 01:33 some of these groups have a little diagonal arrow in the bottom corner.
• 01:37 And if you click that it's going to open up a dialog box which is going to give you
• 01:42 access to some additional options related to that group of commands.
• 01:46 So don't forget about those little hidden menus.
• 01:49 Next to our tabs we have the Tell me what you want to do box.
• 01:53 And we're going to cover this more in the help section of the course, but
• 01:57 this is where you can go if you want to quickly access help or
• 02:00 find out where a command is on any of the ribbons.
• 02:03 In the top right-hand corner we have everything you would expect from
• 02:06 a Microsoft application.
• 02:07 We have access to our account details.
• 02:10 We can minimize, maximize, and close down access from here as well.
• 02:16 Now, underneath the ribbons you can see currently I have a whole host of
• 02:20 different icons.
• 02:21 And, again, we have an entire separate lesson on this little toolbar just here.
• 02:26 And the name of this toolbar is the Quick Access Toolbar or QAT for short.
• 02:31 And we can customize this Quick Access Toolbar to include commands that we need
• 02:35 to access frequently.
• 02:37 It's really just a quick way of clicking on buttons that you use all the time
• 02:41 without having to hunt through all of the ribbons above.
• 02:44 In the main window this is where whatever you're clicked on is going to show.
• 02:49 And as I said, everything that you open appears in its own separate little tab.
• 02:54 So at the moment I only have the contact list open, but
• 02:58 if we take a look on the left-hand side notice the navigation pane.
• 03:03 This template contains lots of different elements.
• 03:06 We have Tables, Queries, Forms, Reports, Macros, and Modules.
• 03:12 If you're creating a database from scratch when you first open it you're not going to
• 03:17 see any of these things in here.
• 03:19 You're going to need to build them.
• 03:20 But because this is a template all of these items are already included in
• 03:24 that template.
• 03:25 So if I was to click on something else, so let's go to Tables and
• 03:29 double-click on Contacts, it's now opening in a separate tab and
• 03:33 I can simply toggle between my two open tabs.
• 03:37 If you want to close down a tab just click the cross in the corner of the tab to get
• 03:41 rid of it.
• 03:42 So this navigation pane on the left-hand side basically categorizes the different
• 03:46 elements, the different things that you create in your database.
• 03:50 These are collapsible so if you want to collapse them up you can and
• 03:54 just focus in on maybe reports or forms, that's fine.
• 03:57 And you can also use the search bar just above to search for
• 04:01 different items because this navigation pane is going to get longer and
• 04:05 longer the more complex your database is.
• 04:08 So if I was just looking for settings I could type that into there and
• 04:11 it's going to jump me straight to it.
• 04:14 Click on clear search string to bring everything back.
• 04:18 So that is your navigation pane and the main window.
• 04:21 One thing to know as well is that from time to time you're going to get a pane
• 04:25 open up on the right-hand side, and that pane is very
• 04:28 much contextual to whatever it is that you're doing at the time.
• 04:31 And you're going to see examples of that throughout this course.
• 04:34 And then finally at the bottom of the screen we have the status bar.
• 04:38 Now at the moment the status bar is pretty much empty.
• 04:42 It says form view over on the left-hand side because that is the view that we're
• 04:46 currently in.
• 04:46 Now views is a really important topic, again,
• 04:49 something we're going to be using throughout this course.
• 04:52 But just so you know, on the Home tab you have a view drop down and it allows you
• 04:56 to toggle between different views for whatever it is that you have open.
• 05:01 So currently I'm viewing this in Form view but
• 05:03 I could go to Design view if I wanted to make changes to the layout of this form.
• 05:08 Now, again, we're not going to go too far off on a tangent but
• 05:11 just be aware of this process of switching between different views.
• 05:15 On the same note, in the status bar on the right-hand side we also have another way
• 05:20 of switching between our views.
• 05:22 So you can see here I'm in Form view.
• 05:24 I can quickly switch to Layout view or
• 05:26 switch to Design view from down here as well.
• 05:30 This status bar can also be customized.
• 05:32 If you right-click on it you're going to get a pop-up menu, and
• 05:35 you can choose what information you want to display in the status bar.
• 05:39 For example, you can see that I have Caps Lock selected.
• 05:42 So if I was to press Caps Lock I can see in the status bar on the right-hand side
• 05:47 that I currently have Caps Lock on.
• 05:49 So the status bar is an information area that you can
• 05:53 customize to show information that might be of interest to you.
• 05:57 And then the only other thing we really need to speak about is the File tab,
• 06:00 because, as we've seen, this works slightly different.
• 06:04 It's not a ribbon that contains commands.
• 06:06 It allows us to jump into what we refer to as the backstage area.
• 06:11 This is where all of your administration stuff takes place.
• 06:15 It's where we come to create new documents, to open existing databases.
• 06:21 We can see some info about our account in here.
• 06:24 We can save, we can print from here as well.
• 06:26 And we can also do things like access our account settings and
• 06:31 customize our copy of access using options.
• 06:35 So now is the time to have a look through all of the ribbons, familiarize yourself,
• 06:40 and get comfortable with navigating around the access interface.

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