Access™ 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

3.3. Development Environment

Access 2007 provides a new interface for much of the development experience. Some things may take some getting used to, but that's typical with most changes. Of course, there are things that will have instant appeal, such as being able to scroll through code. (That's right—no add-ins required; the mouse wheel now scrolls through the code window in the VBA editor.) This section explores some of the other key changes.

3.3.1. Navigation Pane

The Navigation pane (commonly referred to as the NavPane) combines the best of the database window and the Object Dependencies feature. The resizable pane makes all of the objects conveniently available yet easy to hide. Think about one of your projects with more than a hundred objects. Say that you're working on a form that can open two reports and has a subform. How nice would it be if Access listed all of the related objects together? You could see, select, test, and update the right queries, reports, and forms. Well, that's the type of functionality that the NavPane provides.

By default, the Navigation pane displays the tables with their related objects, such as the queries and forms that are based on the table. But it takes only two clicks to change the grouping to be by object type (like the database window), by creation date, or by a variety of other standard listings. Of course, developers have the opportunity to control not only their own environment but also what users can see. So, yes, the Navigation pane ...