Access 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

The New Face of Access 2007

Ever since Microsoft Office conquered the world (way back in the 1990s), programs like Word, Excel, and Access haven't changed a lot. Although a genuinely useful new feature appears once in a while, Microsoft spends more time wedging in odd gimmicks like a talking paper clip.

Access 2007 breaks this pattern and introduces some of the most dramatic changes Office fans have seen since Office 95. The most obvious change is the thoroughly revamped user interface (the windows, toolbars, menus, and keyboard shortcuts you use to interact with Access). After spending far too long trying to simplify the haphazard, toolbar-choked interfaces in most Office applications, Microsoft finally worked up the courage to redesign it all from scratch.

The Ribbon

The Access 2007 ribbon is a super-toolbar that replaces the various toolbars and menus in previous versions.

Note

Access doesn't show the ribbon until you create a database. If you can't stand the suspense any longer, and you want to be able to look at the ribbon on your monitor as you read the next couple of pages, follow the instructions in Section 1.2.1 to create a blank database.

The ribbon's divided into task-specific tabs—Home, Create, External Data, and so on. Initially, Access starts out with four tabs (although other tabs appear when you perform specific tasks). When you launch Access, you start at the Home tab. Click Create (as shown in Figure I-2), and you get access to a slew of powerful commands that let you add new database components.

Figure I-2. The ribbon's full of craftsman-like detail. When you hover over a button, you don't see a paltry two- or three-word description in a yellow box. Instead, you see a friendly pop-up box with a complete mini-description. Here, the mouse is hovering over the Table command.

Tip

Want to reclaim the screen real estate that the ribbon occupies? Just double-click the current tab, and the ribbon collapses, leaving only the row of tab titles visible. Double-click the tab again to pop the buttons back into sight. Section 1.4.2 has more about this feature.

Here's a quick snapshot of the four basic ribbon tabs:

• Homegathers together a variety of common commands, including the familiar copy-and-paste tools and formatting commands for tweaking fonts and colors. You'll also find handy features like sorting, searching, and filtering, all of which you'll tackle in Chapter 3.

• Createhas commands for inserting all the different database objects you'll learn about in this book (see Section 1.1 for the lowdown). These include the tables that store data, the queries that search it, the forms that help you edit it, and the reports that help you print it.

• External Datahas commands for importing data into Access and exporting it to other programs. You'll use these commands in Chapter 10.

• Database Toolsfeatures the pro tools that help experts perform deep-tissue data analysis and add Visual Basic code (a scripting language). Most civilians can safely avoid this tab, although you will tap into its abilities occasionally in Chapter 5, when you learn about linking tables.

It's worth spending some time getting accustomed to the tab-based ribbon. Try clicking one tab after the other, rifling back and forth through the four sections to see what they hold. You'll learn more about all these commands as you make your way through this book.

Tip

If you have a scroll mouse, you can breeze through the tabs even faster by moving the mouse pointer over the ribbon, and then moving the scroll wheel up or down.

One nice ribbon tab feature is that they never change—in other words, you don't see commands mysteriously moving around or winking out of existence. Microsoft designed the ribbon to be predictable, so commands always remain in the same place. However, commands will change their arrangement a bit if you resize the Access window, so that they better use the available space (Figure I-3).

Using the Ribbon with the Keyboard

If you're a diehard keyboard lover, you'll be happy to hear that you can trigger ribbon commands with the keyboard. The trick's using keyboard accelerators, a series of keystrokes that starts with the Alt key (the same keys you used to use to get to a menu). When using a keyboard accelerator, you don't hold down all the keys at the same time. (As you'll soon see, some of them have enough letters to tie your fingers up better than the rowdiest game of Twister.) Instead, you hit the keys one after the other.

The trick to keyboard accelerators is to understand that once you hit the Alt key, you do two things, in this order:

1. Pick the correct ribbon tab.

2. In that tab, choose a command.

Figure I-3. This super-skinny Access window doesn't have much room for ribbon buttons. All the same commands that you saw in Figure I-2 are still in the ribbon, but now you see only small icons with no text. When you're in doubt about a button, hover over it to see its name.

Before you can trigger a specific command, you must select the right tab (even if you're already there). Every accelerator requires at least two key presses after you hit the Alt key. You'll need even more if you need to dig through a submenu.

By now, this whole process probably seems hopelessly impractical. Are you really expected to memorize dozens of different accelerator key combinations?

Fortunately, Access is ready to help you out with a new feature called KeyTips. Here's how it works: Once you press the Alt key, letters magically appear over every tab in the ribbon. Once you hit a key to pick a tab, letters appear over every button in that tab. You can then press the corresponding key to trigger the command. Figure I-4 shows how it works.

Note

In some cases, a command may have two letters, and you need to press both keys, one after the other. You can back out of KeyTips mode at any time without triggering a command by pressing the Alt key again.

Some other shortcut keys don't use the ribbon. These key combinations start with the Ctrl key. For instance, Ctrl+C copies highlighted text, and Ctrl+S saves your current work. Usually, you find out about a shortcut key by hovering over a command with the mouse. Hover over the Paste button in the ribbon's Home tab, and you see a tooltip that tells you its timesaving shortcut key is Ctrl+V. And if you've worked with a previous version of Access, you'll find that Access 2007 keeps most of the same shortcut keys.

Figure I-4. Top: When you press Alt, Access pins KeyTips next to every tab, over the Office menu, and over the buttons in the Quick Access toolbar (more about the Office menu and the Quick Access toolbar in a moment). Bottom: If you follow up with C (for the Create tab), you'll see letters next to every command in that tab. Now you can click another button to run a command. Don't bother trying to match letters with tab or button names; the ribbon's got so many features packed into it that in many cases, the letters don't mean anything at all.

NOSTALGIA CORNER: Access 2003 Menu Shortcuts

If you've worked with a previous version of Access, you may have trained yourself to use menu shortcuts—key combinations that open a menu and pick out the command you want. When you press Alt+E in Access 2003, the Edit menu pops open (in the main menu). You can then press the S key to choose the Paste Special command.

At first glance, it doesn't look like these keyboard shortcuts amount to much in Access 2007. After all, Access 2007 doesn't even have a main menu! Fortunately, Microsoft went to a little extra trouble to make life easier for longtime Access aficionados. You can still use your menu shortcuts, but they work in a slightly different way.

If you hit Alt+E in Access 2007, a tooltip appears over the top of the ribbon (Figure I-5) that lets you know you've started to enter an Access 2003 menu shortcut. If you go on to press S, then you wind up at the familiar Paste Special dialog box, because Access knows what you're trying to do. It's almost as though Access has an invisible menu at work behind the scenes.

Of course, this feature can't help you out all the time. It doesn't work if you're trying to use one of the few commands that don't exist any longer. And if you need to see the menu to remember what key to press next, you're out of luck. Access just gives you the tooltip.

Figure I-5. By pressing Alt+E, you've triggered the "imaginary" Edit menu. You can't actually see it (because it doesn't exist in Access 2007). However, the tooltip lets you know that Access is paying attention. You can now complete your action by pressing the next key for the menu command.

NOSTALGIA CORNER: Why Reinvent the Wheel?

Some Access veterans are understandably skeptical about the new Access interface. After all, we've had to suffer through some painful experiments. Past versions of Access have introduced kooky ideas like personalized menus that always seem to hide just the command you need, pop-up side panels that appear when you least expect them, and floating toolbars that end up strewn across the screen.

In reality, all the Office applications have been struggling to keep up with more than a decade's worth of new features. The menus in most Office programs haven't changed since Word 2.0 hit the scene in the early 1990s. In those days, a basic menu and a single toolbar were just the ticket, because the number of commands was relatively small.

Today, the Office programs are drowning in features—and they're crammed into so many different nooks and crannies that even pros don't know where to look.

That's where the new ribbon fits in. Not only can you easily understand and navigate it, it provides one-stop shopping for everything you need to do. Microsoft's user interface designers have a new mantra: It's all in the ribbon. In other words, if you need to find a feature, then look for it in one of the tabs at the top of the Access window. As you get accustomed to this new system, you'll find it not only helps you quickly use your favorite features, it also helps you discover new features just by browsing.

The Office Menu

One small part of the traditional Access menu's left in Access 2007—sort of. The traditional File menu that lets you open, save, and print files has been transformed into the Office menu. You get there using the Office button, which is the big, round logoin the window's top-left corner (Figure I-6).

You generally use the Office menu for three things:

• Opening, creating, and saving your database. You'll do plenty of this in Chapter 1.

• Printing your work (Chapter 3) and sending it off to other people by email.

• Configuring how Access behaves. Choose Access Options at the bottom of the menu to get to the Access Options dialog box, an all-in-one hub for configuring Access settings.

Figure I-6. The Office menu's bigger and easier to read than a traditional menu. When you click it, it displays a list of menu commands (on the left) and a list of the databases you used recently (on the right).

There's one menu quirk that takes a bit of getting used to. Some Office menu commands hide submenus that have more commands. Take the Print command. You can choose Print from the Office menu to fire off a quick printout of your work. But if you click the right-pointing arrow at the edge of the Print command (or if you hover over it for a moment), then you see a submenu with more options, as shown in Figure I-7.

The Quick Access Toolbar

Keen eyes will have noticed the tiny bit of screen real estate that sits on the Office button's right side, just above the ribbon (Figure I-8). This bit of screen holds a series of tiny icons, like the toolbars in older versions of Access. This area's the Quick Access toolbar (or QAT to Access nerds).

Figure I-7. Print's both a clickable menu command and a submenu. To see the submenu, you need to hover over Print (without clicking), or click the arrow at the right edge (shown here). The ribbon also has a few buttons that work this way.

Figure I-8. The Quick Access toolbar puts the Save, Undo, and Redo commands right at your fingertips. Access singles out these commands because people use them more frequently than any other commands.