Access™ 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

12.1. Ribbon Overview

The Ribbon, the new interface that appears at the top of the large majority of the applications in Office 2007, is designed to provide easier access to those tools that you use most. No longer are the most common commands buried under several layers of menus or hard-to-discover toolbars. Microsoft has added a Home tab in each of the Office applications that support the Ribbon, and it contains the most commonly used tools in that application.

The Ribbon is currently supported in the following applications:

• Access

• Excel

• Outlook (in object inspectors)

• PowerPoint

• Word

Figure 12-1 shows the Home tab in Access 2007.

Figure 12.1. Figure 12-1

Each group of controls in a tab in the Ribbon is, appropriately enough, called a group. The Home tab in Access contains a group to change views (Views), a group to access the clipboard (Clipboard), groups for work with formatting (Font and Rich Text), and groups to work with data (Records, Sort & Filter, and Find).

The Access 2007 Ribbon includes three additional default tabs:

• Create: Replaces the Insert menu in previous versions of Access. Use it to create the different types of objects in your database such as Forms and Reports.

• External Data: Replaces the Get External Data and Import menu items on the File menu in previous versions. It contains the tools that enable you to import and export data.

• Database Tools: Replaces much ...