Microsoft® Access® 2010 24-Hour Trainer

15

Table Modifications

In a perfect world, designing the tables that make up your application would be completed before the Access 2010 table design tools are ever opened. Once a table is designed, created, and saved, the design should not need to be changed. However, in common practice, that is rarely the case and you may often need to make minor, and sometimes major, modifications. The modification can range from changing a field or property or even renaming the table altogether, and these changes can occur pretty much anytime after the original table has been built.

The first, and probably the most important, step is to always make a backup copy of the database file before making changes to the design of the application. You can make modifications manually using the table design tools in Access, programmatically using Visual Basic for Applications, or by executing SQL DDL (Data Definition Language) queries. This lesson discusses only the methods accessible using the Access 2010 built-in table design tools. Visual Basic for Applications and DDL queries are beyond the scope of this lesson.

LESSON SETUP

In this lesson, you learn how to rename a table, add and modify the locking schemes, modify existing fields, and add new fields. You should be familiar with working with tables using the Access 2010 table tools to successfully complete this lesson.

RENAMING A TABLE

Changing a table name seems like a simple process, but you should consider that the change may affect other database ...