Add fields

The second way to add fields to our table is in the “Design View”. First open the table, click the “View” button in the “Ribbon” and select “Design View” from the pop-up menu.

This opens the “Design View” which is divided into two parts. In the upper part we have the field names, “Data type” of the field, and a description.

Here we set the “Data type” of the field in the “Design View”. In the “Description” you can enter information about this field.

In the lower part of the field, the characteristics of the field that is selected in the upper part of the window are listed.The properties of a field are dependent on the selected “Data Type”.

We will talk more about field properties in the next lesson.

Now, to add a field, place the cursor in the bottom field, and type a field name. In this case, “Photo”, because I want a picture of each album. Then I choose “Attachment” as the “Data type”. When we select “Attachment”as the “Data type”, we have only 2 field properties. The first is “Caption”, the text you want to display instead of the field name in the form. The second is “Required” where you have two choices, Yes or No. If something MUST be entered in this column, select “Yes”, otherwise select “No”. Since I do not always have a picture of the album, I choose “No”.

If we attempt to switch back to the “Datasheet View”, a dialog box stating that I must save my table first, appears.
The “Photo” field with a paper clip. Beside the paperclip is a 0 in brackets (0). This means that there is no attachment selected for this record.

To add a photo to a record, double-click the paperclip or, right-click the paper clip and select “Manage Attachments …”. This opens the “Attachments” dialog. Click the “Add” button, browse for the file you want to add, select it and click the “Open” button.

If you want to add multiple attachments click again on the “Add” button.

If you want to remove a photo, select the picture in the dialog box and click the “Remove” button.

Click the OK button when you’re done.

As you can see in the picture below, there is now a (1) beside the paperclip. If you add multiple attachments, the quantity is shown here.

In “Datasheet View” you can not view this picture. For this we need a form. We use forms to enter and view data but will talk more about forms in a later lesson.

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