Database Systems Microsoft Access Practical #2 Making Forms and Reports Nos 215

About forms A form is a type of a database object that is primarily used to enter or display data in a database. You can also use a form as a switchboard that opens other forms and reports in the database, or as a custom dialog box that accepts user input and carries out an action based on the input. Most forms are bound to one or more tables and queries in the database. A form's record source refers to the fields in the underlying tables and queries. A form need not contain all the fields from each of the tables or queries that it is based on.queriesrecord source A bound form stores or retrieves data from its underlying record source. Other information on the form, such as the title, date, and page number, is stored in the form's design.

Creating Forms The easiest way to build a form is by using the Form Wizard. The Form Wizard helps you choose the layout of records in the form and also the background, color, and format of the display. You can also preview the layout and style options when you create a form by using the Form Wizard. A form can be based on a table or a query. After you create a basic form in the Wizard, you can customize it in Design view.

Creating forms In the your database window, under Objects, click Forms, and then double-click Create Form by using wizard. In the Tables/Queries list box, click the table or query from which you want to create the form. Select the fields that you want your form to include. To base the form on the fields in the table, select all the fields by clicking the double forward arrow. Then Click Next. Then select the style you want

Creating Forms Choosing a layout: –Access will now let you choose the layout of your form –Columnar: Gives you each entry in the table by rows –Tabular: Gives you entries by rows –Datasheet: Looks just like the way you normally enter data –Justified: Displays the data in a way that it looks put together in a unified format –PivotView and PivotChart: two methods we will talk about later

Customizing Forms After your form is created, you can edit it further by selecting the form and going to “Design view” You will now be able to change the form in ways that are very similar to Visual Basic You are able to extend the header and footer so that you can make each page of the form look similar.

Creating forms in Design View If you want to control your form yourself, without using a wizard, you can use the design view. After you open up the design view, you’ll see a black sheet. You can edit the color and add headers and footers by right clicking on the screen and choosing those. But before your form will work, you need to bind it to a record source (meaning that the form needs to have some connection with some sort of data) You need to click in a small square at the top left hand corner.

Changing Form properties A small screen will appear and you can change the record source for this form. You can also add in a filter to let you choose which forms you want to see You can also select a special ordering based on one of the fields. Other things to choose, default view lets you see each entry on a separate page, or just a continuous form. You can also decide if you want people to edit the data

Changing form properties After you select a record source in the property box, a smaller window will appear with the fields from that table. If you select fields here, it will automatically insert the data into your form, which you can edit from that point. Now that you have your fields in the form, you are able to position them around the field as you desire, just by selecting and moving. You will also see familiar buttons on the side from visual basic. They will let you enter in more fields, in different formats. Try putting in new fields, list boxes, and combo boxes that are connected to different data sources…

Header and Footer Header and Footer parts let you customize your form so that it always looks the same way A form is a good way for a regular user to use a database and enter data into it. You might want to add a company logo to the top and your name to the bottom. Try to put pictures in the header and the footer by going to Insert picture. For your final project you should have nice headers and footers on your forms

Reports Reports let us create an entire outline of all the information in the database, sorted and grouped by whatever means we want. It also has special feature to provide summing and averaging for numbers and gives you good control over the look and feel The easiest way to create a new report is to use the wizard

Report Wizard It will first ask you to select the fields you want in your report, much like other wizards. Then it will ask for grouping levels. If you double- click on a field, it will sort the records by that field. You can have as many levels as you need. Thus if you want to sort a database of customers by city, it will group them all by city first. Then maybe within the city, you want to group by lastname. So double-click on city, and lastname and you’ll have a report ordered by those two fields

Report Wizard You can add how you want to sort the records as well, on at least four different levels You just need to select a a field and choose whether it is ascending or descending If you click on summary options, it will open a window that lets you add more information for numbered fields. For example, if you have age of everyone stored in a database, you can find the average of all the ages, or the minimum or the maximum. Then you need to choose how to layout your data. If you click on the different formats, you can get a small preview of what they look like The last step is to choose the look and feel of the report, and you can select whatever looks the nicest

Reports in Design View Again, we can also create reports using the design view. It will look very similar to the design view of the forms. You’ll need to select a record source for your reports by clicking in the little box at the upper left hand corner. You’ll also need to add in the fields you want and how you want them displayed. To see how it looks, go to View->Print Preview, since reports are made specifically for printing purposes. If you want to add more grouping, you can go to Sorting and Grouping, in Views. This will let you add and remove different sorting and grouping categories.