Whether you are a newbie or seasoned Access database user, it’s always useful to know some quick tips to help navigate and control the application’s environment.
Here are 5 quick tips to using Microsoft Access 2010 (some are exclusive to this version!):
1. The Ribbon Bar
This is great for the new user but for those who have migrated like myself became a little disorientated. Two little tips here; Get to know the Ribbon Bar it is reasonably well organised and in most cases logically placed and to help you along the way, you can always download a great little Flash application (from Microsoft) which is free.
The other tip is you can hide and show the Ribbon Bar very quickly using the CTRL + F1 function key which toggles the minimise action.
2. Popular Ribbon Bar Tabs
The most common tabs are ‘Home’, ‘Create’ and ‘Design’ which will cater to most of your needs. Other tabs do dynamically appear based on the active window. It has been vastly improved over the earlier versions of Microsoft Access as you no longer have to be in a certain view to access the popular commands i.e. creating forms, reports and converting queries.
3. Query Design View
Nothing major is new here but a nice little enhancement is the ‘Intellisense‘ tool which pops up when keying recongnised keywords (functions) when applying criteria or creating a calculation. The list auto-expands and narrows down to the filtered characters.
4. Exporting a Report into PDF
A nice and well overdue feature is the output to PDF file format option which now replaces the Snapshot viewer tool (from earlier versions). It is easy to run and can be found from the ‘Back Stage’ section in Access under the ‘Publish’ command.
5. Navigation Form
A quick and easy form (screen) can be added to help general Access database users navigate around the design of your database providing tabs and button clicks to open, run and carry out other actions without needing to know anything about macros or VBA.
It replaced the former menu switchboard utility and has a far richer set of tools inclduding formatting. Just take a look at the ‘Create’ tabe under the ‘Forms’ section.
Of course there is much more and if you want to know more about Microsoft Access databases (any version) then my eBooks may be of use. They have a money back guarantee with a free 30 day support.
Tags: access 2010, controlling access 2010, new features in access 2010, quick tips for access 2010, using microsoft access 2010