The Object window is the space below the ribbon in Quick Access Toolbar and to the right of the navigation pane. Right where my mouse is located, this is the Object Window. This window is where you will be opening and working with the various objects in your database. To show you how some of the objects look in the Object window, I would like you to right click next to the word Tables, a shortcut menu appears, I like you to select Expand all. The expands the groups on the Navigation Pane.
What I would like you do to next, is double click on Switchboard Items and this opens the Switchboard Items table. You will notice this appears to the right of the Navigation Pane. In the Object window here, you will see a tab for this open object with the name of the object listed. To close this object, there is an X button on the right side. What I would like you to do next is open up a couple of other objects and have you scroll down until you come to this Form where it says, frmDepartments. Double click on that and this opens that particular form.
You will notice another tab appears in the Object window and you can easily switch between the two objects by clicking on the tabs. I would like you to click one more object, this one here under Reports where it says, rptBirthdayList. Double click on this and this is a report. Here again, you have another tab and each of these tabs has an icon for the specific type of database object Table, Form and Report.
I am going to close the Birthday List report by clicking this X and notice that tab disappears. Alternatively, you can also right click on the tab and see a shortcut menu appear. The options for this particular Form are Save, Close, Close All, and the three views available, Form View, Layout View and Design View. If you like to save any design changes you have made, you can click this Save button. If you click Close, this will close just this active object. If you click Close All, this will close all open objects, and if you notice down here under Form View, this is already highlighted. This is showing the view that's currently being showing on the screen. Click the Close All button and watch how Access closes both of the open objects.
This new tab interface is new in Access 2007, and you can open multiple objects of different types, all at the same time. In previous versions of Access, all open objects appeared as a window in the Object window. What I would like to do is click the Microsoft Office button, select Access Options, and then click where it says, Current Database. Under Document Window Options, you see Overlapping Windows, Tabbed Documents and Display Document Tabs.
I would like you to click Overlapping Windows and then click OK, and you will see this particular Message box pop up. What this is telling you is that particular change you made in the Access Options will not take effect until you reopen the database. So click OK, click the Microsoft Office button again, click Close Database and then let's reopen the database.
I am going to click up here, click Open and double click to open it again. I am going to close this form and let's open the same objects that we did before. I am going to scroll back up and double click on Switchboard Items. Notice you do not see a tab for this particular table anymore, and this is a window that you can click and drag around the screen. You can also resize, let me have you go down to the same Form that we have opened before, double click on the frmDepartments.
Notice that you see this particular object on top of the other table and again this is a free floating window that's you can move around. Each of these has its own Minimize, Maximize and Close button. If I click Minimize on this one, you will notice it minimizes down here to the bottom of the Object window. If I want to maximize it again, I can click the Restore button and it restores backup, and have you opened up the last report, rptBirthdayList. Here again, you see another object window for this one.
This particular view is showing three different objects opened and so it’s a little
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