Practice -
Create a Table:
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1) When you begin a new project, you'll see a project window. In the objects menu of the project window, click 'Tables'.
2) You can create tables using 3 methods: Design View, Using the Wizard, or by Entering Data. We're going to use Design View, so double click 'Create table in Design view'.
3) We're going to create a simple table for employees. Here are the fields:
ID (data type = autonumber)
FirstName (data type = text)
LastName (data type = text)
Phone (data type = text)
Fax (data type = text)
Email (data type = text)
You can set the properties for each field by clicking on the field you wish to edit the properties for, and then changing their properties at the bottom.
4) Click on the 'Phone' field, and place the following in the Input Mask property:
\(000") "000\-0000
This tells Access that the phone number format should be (xxx) xxx-xxxx
Repeat this for the field 'Fax'.
5) Save your table as 'tblEmployee', when prompted to set a primary key select 'Yes'. This will set ID as your primary key.
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Running a Simple Query
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1) In your project window, under 'Objects' click on 'Queries'.
2) Again, you have 3 methods of creating queries, but we're going to use Design view. So, double click on 'Create query in Design view'.
3) Close the Show Table box that pops up, we won't need it.
4) On the top bar of the query window (where the title is) right click and select 'SQL View'.
5) Remove the contents of the box, and paste in:
SELECT ID, FirstName & " " & LastName As Name, Email FROM tblEmployee;
6) Save your query as 'qryEmployee'.
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You can now view this query, but you'll need to input data on your table before the query can pull anything.
Reading the query:
Basically the query is saying: Select these fields: ID, FirstName, Last Name, and Email. But for the first name and last name...make it one row instead of 2 rows, and rename that row to Name. This will show as 'FirstName LastName'.
Next we're telling it from which table to select these fields from.
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I hope this brief tutorial has helped you to get started! Please, keep practicing and reading up on Access around the web. It's a powerful tool to utilize.