Datasheet

Selecting a starting point
So Access is open, and assuming you opened it from the Start menu or from
the Quick Launch bar, you’re staring at the Access interface, which includes
some features whose purposes may elude you or that you may not know how
to use. Hey — don’t worry — that’s why you’re reading this book!
You can find out more about all the tabs and buttons, panels and menus, and
all that fun stuff in Chapter 2 — for now, just look at the ways Access lets you
get started with your database, be it an existing one that needs work or a new
one you have all planned out and ready to go.
Opening an existing database
Well, this is the easy one. If a database already exists, you can open it by
selecting it from the Open Recent Database list on the far right side of the
Access window (see Figure 1-9). Just click once on the database in the list
and it opens, listing its current tables, queries, reports, and forms on the far
left side of the window.
When the database is open, you can open its various parts just by double-
clicking them in that left-most panel, and whatever you open appears in the
main, central part of the window. Figure 1-10 shows a table, ready for editing.
Figure 1-9:
Pick your
recently
used
database
from the list
on the right
and see its
parts listed
on the left.
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Chapter 1: Getting to Know Access 2007
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