Hide Columns

In “Access”, we have the ability to hide columns (fields).

To hide columns, first select the column or columns, right-click (control+click in a Mac) and choose “Hide Fields” in the drop-down menu.

To make the column (s) visible again, click any column title, right-click, and select “Unhide Fields” in the drop-down menu.

In the “Unhide Fields” dialog that appears, click the box next to the column (s) you want to make visible again.

Freeze Columns

Just like in “Excel”, “Access” also has the option to “Freeze” columns (fields). Click above the first column (s) you want to freeze. Right-click a selected column and choose “Freeze Fields” in the drop-down menu. The dividing line between the ‘Frozen’ column, and the next columns is a bit highlighted in bold.

To undo the freeze, right-click on a column title and choose “Unfreeze All fields” in the drop-down menu.

Adjusting Column Width

Just like in “Excel”, we have the option to set the width of the columns to our requirement. Place your cursor between the title for these two columns and when it changes into a two-way-arrow, click and drag it to the desired width.

To set the width of multiple columns simultaneously, select them all and adjust. Place your cursor between two column titles, when it changes into a two-arrow, click and drag it to the desired width.
To select multiple columns, hold the “Shift” key on your keyboard pressed.
A second way to change the column width is to right click a column title and choose “Field Width” in the drop-down menu. 
In the dialog that appears, we have several options:
In the “Column width” you can manually enter a width. The “Standard width” option is 11.55.
If you click on the “Best Fit”, the width of the column will adjust to the size of the data in this column.
Another way to make a column width “Best Fit,” is to double-click the two-way arrow that appears when we place the mouse pointer between two column titles.

Filter Records

As in “Access” 2007, “Access” 2010 also has filtering capabilities in the table.

Click the downward pointing arrow beside the column title. This opens a list of the unique values from the field. Click the “Select All” box. This removes the check boxes for all. Select the checkbox for the fields that you want to view data in the table. Select “Alice Cooper” and “Deep Purple” and click the “OK” button.

Note that a filter icon appears next to the column title. To remove the filter, click the downward pointing arrow next to the title column and Click “Clear Filter From….”. You have the option to filter on one or more columns. In the filter option drop-down list, you also have the ability to filter out certain parts of the text.

This is useful if you are looking for something and cannot remember the name, but know the letter (s) with which the name begins.

Choose “Begins with …” from the sub-list and click “OK.” This opens a dialog window where you first start typing one or more letters.

The options in the sub-list of text filters are pretty self explanatory.

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