Hands-On Microsoft Access: A Practical Guide to Improving Your Access Skills

Creating Fields

Creating fields in tables is among the most important Access tasks. In this section, I discuss naming fields; selecting a data type; if appropriate, designating the field as a primary key; and providing a description.

Naming Fields

I discussed several general rules for naming fields in Chapter 3. Field names should fully describe the field. Like names of other Access objects, a field name cannot include more than 64 characters. Access allows you to include spaces in field names, but because of possible naming conflicts, field names should be spelled solidly: PurchasePrice, SerialNumber, PostalCode, and so on. If you must include a space to avoid confusion, use an underscore instead; for example, in a field of IDs for VIPs, use ...