EASY WAY OF CREATING A TABLE IN MS ACCESS

 Easy Way of Creating a Table in Microsoft Access

Easy way of creating a Table in Microsoft Access

​Are you interested or do you have a passion for learning Microsoft Access? In your organization, you would come across a situation to get the particulars of any product, manpower position, details of Human resources portfolio, etc. in just a click.  This can be done comfortably and easily if you know how to store the data in your system.  Microsoft Access helps in carrying out this task very easily and in a reliable manner.

Here is the step-by-step guide for starting your learning.  In this article, I shall guide you on how to easily create a Database in MS Access.  

Data integration is considered to be ranked at the top in any industry or organization.  In this developed world, the digitalization of data has become very much imperative.  With the collection and storage of data, any query can be ascertained just by a click on your computer.  To accomplish this task, first of all, the collection and storage of data in one place is important.  Microsoft Access comes in handy for this assignment.  One can get each and every particular in the form of queries and also in the Report format.  However, it is essential to collect the data and put them in the form of a Table, which serves as the basic component.  In this article, we shall see how to create a TABLE in Microsoft Access.

If you have the data, it will be easy to put them in the form of a Table by following a few steps detailed below.  This Table, once created, will be serving as a source for our Querries and Reports.

 

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDANCE for creating a Table :

• Open Microsoft Access

Microsoft Access Database (2007)

• Select the "Create" tab

Click on the "Create"

• From the "Create" tab, select the "Table" option.

Select the "Table" option

• Go to the “View” tab.

• Select the “Design" view. You will be prompted to Save the Table.

Select the "View" Tab

• Name the Table as per your choice.
• Type the Fields you want.
• Then, you will be prompted to specify the data type for each field. The data type will depend upon the type of particulars you are going to feed into the Table.  For example, if you are going to type the Name of a person, Select the data type as “Text”, for entering Amount, the data type would be Currency, and so on. The Field type column is provided with a Dropdown Menu.
• After creating the Table in Design View, Right Click on the file and save the Blank Table thus created by you.
• Switch over from “Design View” to “Data Sheet View”.
• In the Data Sheet View, you can enter the data and keep saving the Database at frequent intervals to avoid your effort going wasted in the event of power failure or any unforeseen event.

As I already mentioned, Tables are the main source for any Database. Tables help in storing the data which can be called back at any point in time by way of creating queries and thereupon generating Reports.

The above method can be adopted for creating a Table manually.  However, MS Access also provides a Table Wizard, which can also be considered as a Table Template for compiling data of different forms.

If you want to create a Table using a Table wizard, just click on the “Create Table” command in the “Create” tab of the ribbon. “Table Wizard,” will be opened and the same will take you to create a Table automatically, where you will be required to fill the data with the required particulars.

In this method, follow the below-mentioned steps:

• Give a name to your Table. You can recall the details based on the data you have provided in the Table. If you are creating a Table for storing the details of your employees in the Organisation with First Name, Last Name, Address, Contact No., Mail Id, Date of Joining, his Performance etc. you may give the name of the Table as “ExployeesTable”.
• After naming the Table, add the necessary fields as mentioned above like Name, Address and other particulars. For adding a field, just click in the first empty column of the table and fill up the name of the field.
• Once the fields are added, select the relevant data type for such fields as, Text, Number, Date/Time, Boolean, Memo, Hyperlink, Attachment, Lookup, and OLE Object.  It is very much important that you select the appropriate Data Type for the respective Field.  For a selection of the proper data type, click on the field and then pick the “Data Type” column header from the drop-down menu.
• After setting the data type for each and every field, specify whether the field is mandatory or not. If the field is essential to be filled up, it should contain a Value, else you will see an error message. To precisely decide whether the said field is a field required, select the field and then click the “Required” column header to open the drop-down menu.

·        After completing the preparation of a Table, save the Table by clicking the “Save” button on the ribbon.  Now, I hope, you would have gained adequate knowledge in creating a Table in MS Access very easily and make use of the same for extracting queries and Reports.

What are the different forms of Data Types in MS Access Table?

·       For entering Alphanumeric values, the data type “Text” is selected. For example, to fill in Name, Address, Particulars / Description, etc., the Text data type is to be selected, where you can enter up to a max of 255 characters.

·       If you have to enter, and store Numerical Values like integers, decimals, currency, etc. you have to select the data type as “Number”, where you can enter upto a maximum of 16 digits.

·       For entering Date and time values, you have to select data type as “Date/Time”.  Further, Access provides various types of formats for entering the Date/Time.  Select the format according to your choice.

·       If you want to store the data in True/False or Yes/No format, you may select the data type as “Boolean”.

·       Data type “Memo” should be used for storing Longer Text values such as Comments or Notations etc. which can store upto 65536 characters.

·       Data type “Hyperlink” is used for storing the ‘mail addresses’ or ‘URLs’.

·       For storing Files, Images, etc. you may use the Data type as “Attachment”

·       For the creation of a list of values to be selected from a List in Drop Down format, the “Lookup” Data type is to be selected.

·       Finally, the data type “OLE Object” should be selected for entering data from another program such as Excel or Word.

 

With the above, I am confident that you would not have any difficulty in creating a Table in Microsoft Access hassle-free.

Awaiting your feedback on this post,

Venkataraman, Author