Access® 2007 For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Finding Your Way Around Access

In This Chapter

• Getting started

• Tabs, buttons, and menus

• Using your mouse to get from here to there

• Letting your fingers do the walking

If you ever used Access 2003 or any of its predecessors, or if you've used any of the Microsoft Office suite before the 2007 edition, you're probably surprised by the new 2007 interface. I say you're probably surprised because in at least the last two or three versions of Office, Microsoft hasn't introduced any major changes to the look and feel of the software. In fact, many people felt that there was no big change between any of the versions of Office since Office 97, and a lot of people chose to stick with whatever version they were using when new versions came out. You may, for example, be upgrading to Office 2007 after having used Office 2000 for several years, never having seen the need to move to Office XP or 2003.

Whatever version of Office (and therefore Access) you've been using, the new Office 2007 interface is strikingly different:

• Menus have given way to tabs and buttons in what's known as the Ribbon.

• Toolbars are no longer made up of distinct, 3‐D buttons. Instead, there are buttons and graphic examples of formatting, pictures of what the buttons create, and drop‐down lists.

Figure 2-1 shows the Access 2007 interface for a new, blank database with an as‐yet‐unpopulated table on its own tab. In this image, the Datasheet tab is active, but you can see the Home, Create, External Data, and Database Tools ...