Selecting

In order to change the data in Access, you must first select on the text, cell, row, or column. To select text, place your mouse inside of a cell and click. Once you do that, you should see a flashing vertical line called cursor. The cursor tells you two important things. One, it lets you know that the computer is ready for you to start entering information. Two, the position of the cursor lets you know where characters will appear once you start typing. You can erase characters in Access just like you do in any other program by using the backspace and delete keys. Backspace erases to the left of the cursor and delete erases to the right of the cursor. p>To select a cell, place the mouse in the top left side of the cell you are interested in highlighting and once your mouse turns into a fat, white plus sign, click. You should then have the entire cell selected.

To highlight an entire column or row, click on the column headings to select a column and click on the row markers to select a row. In each case,your mouse should turn into an arrow before you click.

To select more than one row, cell, or column, try to click, and hold, and on the cells, column headings, and row headings.

Inserting a column in Tables

There are many ways to insert a column in Access.

• Select a column and right click so you get a pop-up menu. Next, choose the insert column option. A column will be inserted to theleft of the column you highlighted.
• You can also place your mouse inside of the table and choose Column from the Insert Menu. As with the above option, a column will be inserted to the left of the column your cursor is in.
• Another way to insert a column is to switch to design view. Here you can type in the name of the new column you want underneath FieldName.

• If you want a new row or record, click on the new record toolbar button, which is also located on the bottom of your table.

• To delete a column, right-click a column heading and choose deletefrom the pop-up menu. A warning box will appear asking if you aresure you want to delete the entire column.
• You can also select one or more columns and choose delete from theeditmenu.

Moving around in tables

Home/End

To move around in a table use the HOME and END keys on the keyboard. When an entire cell is selected, hitting the HOMEkey will move to the first cell within that row or if you hit the ENDkey, then the last cell within that row will be highlighted. If the cursor were inside of a cell, then the HOME and END keys would place the cursor in front of or end of the characters within that cell.

Tab/Arrow Keys

You can move from one cell to another by hitting the TAB key on your keyboard. To move from cell to cell in the opposite direction (right to left), you hold down the SHIFT key and tap on the TAB key.

You can also move from cell to cell, once a cell is highlighted, byhitting on the arrow keys. If the entire cell is not highlighted as youuse the arrow keys, the cursor will move from one character to another,rather than from cell to cell, until you reach the last character in thatcell.

Entering and Editing Information in cells (F2)

Sometimes when you are moving around in a table the whole cell is highlighted.If you would like to edit the cell press the F2 key on your keyboard andthe cursor immediately moves to the end of the cell.

Getting Help

OfficeAssistant

If you click on the toolbar button with a question mark an Office Assistantwill appear. The Office Assistance is a friendly way to get help. Whenyou click on the Assistant you can then type in a topic or what your questionis and hit the search button. The Assistant will then list a variety of topics that it thinks are relevant to your question. Click on the blue dot next to any topic to see more information on that particular topic. When you do, the Assistant will open up the appropriate help menu files.

Help Menu

If you would like to search the help menu yourself, choose Contents and Index from the Help Menu. Click on the Content tab to see a list of topics. To learn more about any topic, double click it to see more specific information within that topic.

You can also click on the Index tab to search the help files. The topics within the help files are all listed in alphabetical order. Type in the subject you want more information on in the white box at the top. The index will display the help files it contains under the topic you typed in.

The hard part about using the help index is that in most cases you must already be familiar with the terminology that the help files use or else you will not find a match for your subject. One guideline you should follow is to type in a main topic first and see what subtopics are listed below that topic. For instance, do not type in Insert columns when you want to learn how to add a column into a table. Instead, type in columns and scroll through the subtopics in the list and look for information about adding columns.

No matter if you use the Office Assistant, Index, or Contents, you will end up viewing the same help files. You can choose any method to searchfor the information you need. The method you choose will depend upon which is easiest and most helpful to you.

Right Click/Question Mark

Sometimes when you open up a dialog box, you can see a question mark in the title bar. If you click on that button and then click on any word in the dialog box, a message box will appear describing the function of the word you click on. You can also get the same type of message by right clicking on the top of any word in the dialog box and choosing What’sthis.

Using Columns

Renaming

• If you would like to rename a column heading, then right-click on top of the column heading and choose rename. When you do, the entire column heading becomes highlighted and you should see a cursor. You can type in a new name and the highlighted text will automatically be replaced.
• Another way to rename a column is to double click on the column heading. Then follow the same process as above.
• Also, you can leave your cursor in a column and choose RenameColumn from the Format menu.

Freezing column(s) allows you to lock certain columns in place. Meaning, when you are typing information into a record and you hit the TAB key to move to the next field, sometimes the item or person, that you are typing the information for, are no longer on the screen, making it confusing as to who or what record you are typing in. Freezing columns locks certain columns (like product names or people’s names) to the left of the screen, so when you are moving from cell to cell the frozen columns always remain displayed.

Hiding

You may not want to see all of the columns or fields in your table all the time. To hide a column, right-click on the column heading and choose hide. The column will then disappear. Do not worry, you have not deleted the column, hiding simply allows the column to not be displayed. To unhide a column, click on unhide in the format menu. When you do, you will see a list of all the fields with a checkbox next to them. To display a particular field or column, make sure there is a check mark in the box next to that field or column.
 
 

Moving

To rearrange the order of the columns, in data sheet view, select a column that you would like to move. Next, click and hold on the column heading. You should see a black thick line appear. Then, while holding the mouse button down, drag the column to its new position and let go. The black line allows you to see where the column will be inserted.

Adjusting the width

There are many ways to adjust the width of a column.

• One way is to right-click the column and choose ColumnWidth. When you do a dialog box appears. You can change the column width by clicking inside the white box so that you have a cursor and then delete the number inside the box and type in a new number. Or you can click the checkbox next to standard width. You can also click on Best Fit so the column width is automatically readjusted to the cell with the largest width requirement.
• Another way to readjust the width is to place your mouse on top of the line that separates two columns in the column headings. Your mouse should turn into a double-sided black arrow. Once your mouse has changed into the arrow, click, hold, and drag to the desired width.
• Yet another way to adjust the width is to double click on the column heading divider, once your mouse has turned into a double-sided arrow. The width will adjust to Best Width. You can adjust all columns at once, by selecting each column and double clicking the last column heading divider.

Sorting

Highlight the column you are interested in sorting and click on the ascending (A-Z)or descending (Z-A) toolbar button or from the right-click pop up menu. Ascending means in alphabetically order or numerical order depending on the type of information you are sorting. Descending means in reverse alphabeticalor numerical order.
 
 

Filter by selection

Ifyou wanted to see records with a specific value (or information) within a column you can perform a filter. A filter separates and displays onlythose records that you want to see. For example, if I wanted to see who in my address table has a 44119 zip code, I would select on a cell withthat value and click on the filter by selection toolbar button. When you do, you will see only those records that have a 44119 zip code. To remove the filter, you can click on the remove filter toolbar button. Note, you can also find these commands in the Records Menuor from the right-click pop-up menu.

Filter by exclusion

Likewise, you can filter by exclusion, which means that you can highlight a 44119 zip code, choose filter by exclusion, in order to get records that have zip codes other than 44119. In short, you would see all the zip codes except for those that are 44119.

Note once you have filtered records, you can then perform another filter within those filtered records. For example, once I have extracted those records that have a 44119 zip code, I could then filter the records for anyone who is a senior citizen. Therefore, a filter withina filter is possible.

Advanced filters

Another way to filter records is to do an advancedfilter. Click on Advanced Filter/Sort from the Filteroption in the Records Menu. When you do, a new window appears. Click on the drop down list in the Field box and select the field you wish to filter on. Next, click inside the Criteria cell for that column and type in what you would like to filter (you must type it exactly the way it is in the table). In our previous example, this would be 44119. Once you have typed in something, quotation marks are automatically displayed around the text. Next, click on the Field drop down list in the next column and then type in a criteria for that field. You can see that there are many columns for you to  continue making further filtering options. Once you have typed in all the filters you are interested in, click on the apply filter toolbar button and your results will be displayed.

Notice that you can also do an advanced sort from this same window. Let’s say we wanted to sort an address table by name. If we wanted everyone’s last names sorted in alphabetical order we would clickon the Last Name field option and click on the drop down list in the Sortcell and choose ascending. In case some people have the same last name. We would want to also sort by first name, so we would click on first name in the next field column and choose ascending in the sort cell. Then we could press apply filter and see the records sorted first by last name and then by first name. Be careful which field you put in the first columns in. Access performs the sort from left to right.

Filter by form

Another way to filter is to filter by form, which can be found in the Filteroption in the Records menu or in the toolbar. When you click onfilter by form, a window opens up. Here you will see a list of all the field names in your table and an empty row beneath the column headings. When you click in the cell below each field name, a drop down list appears with all the different values that have been entered into that particular field. You can click on a specific value that you would like to filter. If you want to filter the records based on two or more criteria, continue to select the other values you are interested. Note, you do not have to have a value in every column, only those columns you would like to set a criteria for. When you are finished, click on apply filter to see your results.

Obtaining a table

Creating new tables

There are four different options in creating any new object. One, using an Auto command, which creates either a form or a report for you based on a table or query, without asking the user any questions, all the choices are decided by the computer. For more control, you can use a Wizard, which is a step by step dialog box that helps you to make choices for what you are trying to do. For total control use the design or datasheet view. These options provide you with a blank screen in order for you to control every decision.

Wizards

Tocreate a table you can use the Access Wizard, however, this method is not recommended. To start the wizard, click on Tables tab in the database and click on new. Then select on Table Wizard. The first part of the Wizard is to select which fields you would like to include in your table. You can click on any sample table to display all of the fields that are included within that table. If you would like to have the same field in your table click on that field and hit the button with this>symbol on it. That will place the field in the "Fields in my new table" list. To remove any field from this list, click on it and hit the <button. From the sample tables, you can choose as many fields or none ofthe fields if you like. You can also rename a field by clicking on it and selecting the rename field option and typing in a new name. Once you are finished, hit on the NEXT button. You will be asked to type in an ame for your table and to choose whether you would like a primary key field or not. For now, always choose yes. The next step helps you set up relationships within your database. Skip this for now since we have not talked about that yet. Then click on finish. Your table should be ready for data.

Using design or datasheet view

You can also create a table without a Wizard in either design or datasheet view. As above, click on New except choose datasheet view this time. When you do, you will see a table appear with many fields all named Field 1, Field 2, etc. Rename the fields so they represent the field names you want, then delete the remaining fields. You can then start entering information into the table.
 

Recommended way for creating table: Choose design from the New Table option, you will see a totally different window. In the space provided, type in a field name. Next, click on the drop down list and select a data type. Continue to do this until all of your field names have been entered. Then click on datasheet view and start entering in the data.

Below is a table that summarizes the various types of Data Type values.

Table 1: Source-Word Help Menu

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