To create “Switchboard Form”

The most convenient way for users to access your database is with boards (“Switchboards”).

When you make “Swichboards forms”, the only purpose is to change functionality of the form within the database.

A switchboard is actually a page with buttons that users can click to open “Reports” and “Forms”, for them to view, enter, edit or print the data which they see.

In order to create a “Switchboard Form”, we select “Forms” in the “Objects window” and click” New”.

We choose “Design View”, but do not give a table or query in the dropdown menu.
And click OK.

In the “Forms” “Design View”, we must first select the entire form.
We do this by selecting the “Form Selector”, which is located in upper left corner of the form.
Click the black square you see and select all.

Then we click on the “Properties” button to set some properties in the “Properties Panel”.

• “DefaultView”: Single Form
  

  (If you use Access 97 or Access 2000, select the field: Views Allowed, “Form” from the dropdown menu)

• “Allow Form View”: Yes
• “Allow Datasheet View”: No
• “Allow PivotTable View”: No
• “Allow Pivot Chart View”: No
• “Records Selector”: No
• “Navigation Buttons”: No
• “Dividing Lines”: No

Option 3, 4 and 5 assure us that the user cannot change the “View” feature of our “Switchboard”.

Option 6 and 7 assure us that the user is not allowed to enter data in these forms.

Option 8, we can set to yes, if we wish, this gives only a line again at the end.

Option 1 and 2, I think are clear.

Close the “Properties” dialog box and save the changes to the form.
You can now start adding the desired “Controls” (usually buttons) in the “Switchboard Form”.

A good example of this is the switchboard that is included in the “Northwind” database:

If we now see the design view and select a button and open the “Properties” dialog, you can see what “Expression” the guests of Microsoft to have given the “Categories” button in the “Switchboard”.

Control of the “StartUp” behavior

Depending on the size and complexity of your database, you may have to use multiple “Switchboard forms”.  But usually one is sufficient.  If you have a swichboard that you want to show each time you boot the database, you have the option to set it as your “StartUp” database.

To set this up, we have to close all our database objects.
Then we click on “Tools” on menubar and select “StartUp”

In the “StartUp” dialog box, select the dropdown menu from the “Display Form / Page” form that you want to start:

If you do not want “Switchboard” or any other form to start when opening the database, you simply choose None.

If you do not want the “Database window” open at “StartUp”, uncheck the box for “Display Database Window”.  There are some other options you can set, such as a title, etc. Try them all except DVDs.

Click OK when you are satisfied with the settings.

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