Access 2010: The Missing Manual

Using Forms

Now that you’ve created your first form, it’s time to take it for a test spin. All forms have three different viewing modes:

• Layout view. This is the view you’ve been using so far. It lets you see what your form looks like (with live data), rearrange fields, and apply formatting.

• Design view. While Layout view provides the simplest way to refine your form, Design view gives you complete power to fine-tune it. In Design view, you don’t see the live data. Instead, you see a blueprint that tells Access how to construct your form. You’ll start using Design view later in this chapter.

• Form view. Both Layout view and Design view are there to help you create and refine your form. But once you’ve perfected it, it’s time to stop designing your form and start using it to browse your table, review the information it contains, make changes, and add new records.

Note

When you open a form by double-clicking it in the navigation pane, it opens in Form view. If you don’t want this view, then right-click your form in the navigation pane, and choose Layout View or Design View to start out in a different view.

To try out the form you created, switch it to Form view if you’re not already there. Just right-click the tab title, and choose Form View.

In Form view, you can perform all the same tasks you performed in the datasheet when you worked with a table. With a simple form, the key difference is that you see only one record at a time.

Most people find forms much more intuitive than the datasheet ...