Access 2000 Introduction

Creating Tables-Design View

Since every person has unique needs for the creation of tables, many choose to create the table on their own, especially since it is a simple process to create a table. When you click on New to create a new table, you can choose to enter Design View. The computer will then give you a screen similar to the following:

For each field name that you enter, you must declare a data type, as explained above. There are 10 different data types:

TEXT: Any combination of letters, numbers, or calculations, up to 255 characters MEMO: Any combination of letters, numbers, or calculations, up to 65,535 characters NUMBER: used for numeric values DATE/TIME: used for date and/or time values CURRENCY: monetary amounts, usually set in setup depending on the country computer is used in AUTONUMBER: a field in which a number is filled in and incremented by 1 for each new record YES/NO: can only contain a YES/NO, TRUE/FALSE, or an ON/OFF entry OLE OBJECT: an object created in another program HYPERLINK: text that is used to link to other locations or pages LOOKUP WIZARD: allows you to choose a value from another table or a created list

With each field, you can also type in a description. At the bottom of the dialog box, you are also given properties that can be set for each field. Depending on the data type for that field, you can set default values, require an entry in that field, restrict the type of data that can be entered into the field, and produce an error message if a user tries to enter invalid data into a field. You can also select a field and make it a primary key field by clicking on the Primary Key button on the toolbar.

You can rearrange the fields in Design View by clicking on the row heading gray box to the left of the field, then clicking and dragging that field to a new location. <Click here> for a video demonstration of this. (192K)