Why do we use forms?

We use “Forms” when we want to view separate records in a “Database view” or when we want to add, modify or delete records in a database. In “Access”, we have three different ways to create “Forms”. We can create “Forms” using the “Form” (1), the “Form Wizard” (2) or the “Blank form” (3).

To get started, click the “Create” (4) tab in the “Ribbon”.

The “Form”

The first way I’m going to create a “Form” is with the “Form”, sometimes called “Auto-form”. This is the easiest and quickest way. The only thing you have to do is select the table (1) or query in the “Navigation Pane” and click on the “Form” (2) in the “Ribbon”.

This will give you a “Form” with all fields from this table or query. The layout of the “Form” or order of the fields will be discussed later. Click the ‘cross’ icon in the upper right corner of the “Form” (1) to close the form. At the bottom, we find navigation buttons in the “Form” (2) that we need to navigate between different records in our table.

Click the “Yes” button in the dialog that appears (2), if you want to save the “Form”.

Enter a name for the “Form” in the second dialog box that appears (3) and click the OK button.

“AutoForm_Students” seems like a good name but, we will see later how this “Form” is created.

Once you have clicked the OK button, close the  “Form” and this appears in the “Navigation pane” under the “Forms” Object type (4).

To open the “Form” again , double-click the “Form” in the “Navigation panel”.

 

 

The Form Wizard

A second way of creating a “Form”, is with the “Form Wizard”. When this button is clicked, it opens a wizard spread over several windows, with different questions. In the upper box (A), select the table or query that you want to make a “Form” for.

Since I already had the table selected in the “Navigation panel”, the “Form Wizard” already filled this for me. The available fields from the “Students” table are displayed in the left window (B). Select the field you want to add to your “Form” in the left column and click the ‘>’ button (C) to place it in the right pane. In this case, I want all fields from the “Students” table in my “Form”, so I click the ‘>>’ button.

Click “Next”.

In the next window of the wizard, I determine the layout of the “Form”.
We have four possibilities:

1. “Columnar”
2. “Tabular”
3. “Datasheet”
4. “Justified”

You should try the different layouts.

For this example, I choose “Columnar” and click the “Next” button.
In the next wizard window, give the “Form” a name and choose whether we want to open the “Form” or change the design of this.

Click the “Finish” button.

The second “Form” is created, this time, with the “Forms Wizard” and is added to the “Navigation panel”. The layout of the “Form” created by the wizard is slightly different than the layout of the “Form” created with the “Auto Form”, but you can change it at any time, so this is not an issue.

In the next lesson, we will first consider the third way to discuss creating a “Form” and then we format it.

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