Access 2016 Bible

Chapter 3Creating Access Tables

IN THIS CHAPTER

1. Creating a new table
2. Modifying the design of a table
3. Working with field properties
4. Specifying the primary key
5. Adding indexes
6. Documenting a table's design
7. Saving a new table
8. Working with tables
9. Adding data to a table
10. Using attachment fields

In this chapter, you learn how to create a new Access database and its tables. You establish the database container to hold your tables, forms, queries, reports, and code that you build as you learn Access. Finally, you create the actual tables used by the Collectible Mini Cars database.

ON THE WEB

This chapter uses the examples in the database named Chapter03.accdb. If you haven't yet downloaded this file from the book's website, please do so now.

Table Types

To Access, a table is always just a table. But to your Access application, different tables serve different purposes. A database table fits into one of three types: object, transaction, or join. Knowing what type of table you're creating helps to determine how you create it.

Object tables

Object tables are the most common. Each record of this type of table holds information that relates to a real-world object. A customer is a real-world object, and a record in a table named tblCustomers holds information about that customer. The fields in an object table reflect the characteristics of the object they represent. A City field describes one characteristic of the customer—namely, the actual city where the customer is. When creating ...