Microsoft® Office 2010 Bible

Chapter 34. Creating Access Tables

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating a new database

Creating a new table

Navigating in the table

Entering field names and descriptions

Selecting a field data type

Working with field properties

Specifying the primary key

Saving a table's design

In this chapter, you learn how to create a new Access database and its tables. You establish the database container to hold your tables, forms, queries, reports, and code that you build as you learn Access. Finally, you create the actual tables used by the CollectibleMiniCars database.

Getting Started with Access

As you open Access 2010, the default startup screen, called the Backstage view, is revealed (see Figure 34-1). I'll examine the Backstage in more detail later in this chapter, but you should understand the major components of the user interface (UI) as you get started using Access 2010. Even experienced Access developers are surprised at how different Access 2010 looks from previous versions.

Each time you open Access, the welcome screen may look different, depending on whether Office.com offers new templates and you've elected to have Office update automatically. In an effort to provide a high level of support for Microsoft Office users, Microsoft has equipped each of the Office applications with the ability to communicate directly with Microsoft's Web Servers to access new Office.com content.

The center of the screen is dominated by the Office.com templates, which are described in the next section. The right side of the ...