Microsoft® Access® 2010 24-Hour Trainer

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Customizing the Backstage

Completely new to Access 2010, and many of the other Office 2010 applications, is the Office Backstage. The Backstage replaces the Access 2007 Getting Started screen and is intended to be the new user interface for launching new sessions of Access, as well as replace the previous File menu, providing common database and file-related tasks. The really cool thing about the Office 2010 Backstage is that it is highly customizable, much like the Ribbon. Although there is no UI for building custom Backstage settings, the user can build a custom Backstage using XML code, just as with the Ribbon. This lesson discusses the basics of adding some customizations to the Access 2010 Backstage.

LESSON SETUP

The lesson is designed to provide a basic overview of building customization into the Access Backstage. The only requirements are that you be familiar with the different types of database objects and that you have a general knowledge of what the Backstage does and how it works. Knowing what XML is and how it works will also be helpful for this lesson, but is not required.

THE ACCESS 2010 BACKSTAGE

Upon launching the Access 2010 program without a database application, you will immediately see the new Access 2010 Backstage and have likely seen it countless times throughout the lessons in this book. As you are aware, tabs on the left side show the various Backstage pages. Each of these pages contains controls to provide some program or database-level functionality, ...