In this video we’ll take a brief tour of Microsoft Access 2007. Access 2007 is a database management system or DBMS for short. You can think of a database management system as your phone book – listing people, addresses, and companies all sorted alphabetically.
Access can be used to create databases that track your home inventory to providing data entry screens and reports that access large quantities of company data.
The common objects that make up Access 2007 include:
• Tables
• Forms
• Queries
• Reports
Tables – Tables allow you to store data. A database could have one or more tables. A table could store names of people.
Queries – Queries allow you to extract data from your tables.
Forms – Forms allow you to enter, view and edit your data.
Reports – Reports allow you to present your data in the tables or queries in a readable and printable style. Access reports work well with other Office applications such as Word and Excel.
Like other Office applications, Access 2007 also provides wizards to help you get started creating a database quickly. For now, we’ll open the existing Nutrition database to view the various objects that you work with in Access 2007.
As you can see, the navigation pane allows us to work with Tables, Queries, Forms, and Reports.
Like other Office applications, Access 2007 uses the new Ribbon to navigate its features. The tabs on the Access 2007 Ribbon include:
• Home
• Create
• External Data
• Database Tools
Each tab contains groups of controls that allow us to manipulate our database while we create it and modify it.
The Quick Access toolbar allows us to add our favorite commands for quick access.
Don’t forget the Alt key for keyboard shortcuts. Pressing the Alt key will show “badges” that display the shortcut to a menu or command.
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