I would like you to open up Microsoft Office Access 2007 now. For me I have created a Desktop shortcut to open the program. So I am going to double click on my program shortcut and I am going to see the Getting Started screen. You are going to see this screen every time you open up Access 2007. So it's a good time for us as you will explore the different areas of this screen. In the upper left corner you are going to see what's called the Microsoft Office button. This button and the controls next to it, this is called the Quick Access Toolbar. Later in this lesson, we are going to discuss both of these features but for now I would just like you to understand that these two elements are interrelated in terms of the commands that you will see all throughout Access.
Beneath the Microsoft Office button is Template Categories. If you click on Featuring, the left side of the screen does a change but what you will see in the middle of the screen is a whole bunch of Featured Online Templates from Microsoft. I am going to cover these in just a second here. If I click on Local Templates, you will see that the middle of the screen change. Local Templates are databases that are saved on your local hard drive. Now this screen may not show them all depending upon how you have installed Access. If you did not select to install all of the local templates, you might not see everything here but I have installed all of the templates. So you can see them all.
From Microsoft Office Online is Business. So click on Business and you will notice the templates change. These are categorized by Business and all of these are templates that are found on Microsoft's site that you can download. For instance, you can see Assets, Business account ledger, Contacts, Customer service, quite a few here all related around a particular business topic. If you click Education on the left, right now you just see two, Faculty and Students. These two database templates could be used by students and teachers inside an administrative facility of a school.
If you click Personal, as if right now we have five templates, Contacts, Home inventory, Lending library, Nutrition, and Personal account ledger. You can use these particular templates for your own personal use at home. Next click Sample and you will only see one Northwind 2007. If you have worked with previous versions of Access, the word Northwind should sound very familiar. This particular version Northwind 2007 has seen a lot of changes to that particular database. If you have worked with it before and thought it was a little bit too simplistic, I encourage you to open this database and take a look around because Microsoft has really changed this one up in this version.
Click back to Featuring, and you will notice at the upper left corner of the middle of the screen here under Getting Started, you will see a button that says New Blank Database. Any time you will need to create a new blank database in Access 2007, this is your starting point, and we will start that in just a minute. Beneath Blank, as you have learned previously, you will see all these Featured Online Templates.
At the bottom of the Getting Started screen, you will see some links to Microsoft Office Online. Right now we have a link to show you What's new in Access 2007, over here we have Training, Templates, and Downloads. If you click any of these links, you will be taken to Microsoft Office Online site where you can download additional templates, you can find some training resources. Beneath here there are three more links, all of these are information that you can use to get a jump start on using Access 2007. The links that you will see here might be a little bit different than what you are seeing on the screen right now, and this is because Microsoft is actually going to be updating this information from time to time.
So if you come back in a week, you might see a different link or two, or some different ones. Right at the very bottom of the Getting Started screen, you will see a Learn more link and you can learn how to automatically have this updated. The default is to have this automatically updated.
On the far right of the Getting Started screen is the Open Recent Database task pane. If you click More, you will see the Windows Open dialog box and here you can open up a previously saved Access database. Once the Windows Open dialog box comes on our screen, you can browse to another folder anywhere on your Desktop. For example, I am going to double click on Part 1, Lesson 01, and I can open up any of these three databases in the Lesson 01 folder.
In the Files of type text box you will see a list of all the particular database file extensions that Access 2007 can open, you will see the .accdb, .mdb file format; quite a few database formats that Access 2007 can recognize from previous versions. You can either type in the File name that you like or highlight it, click the Open button to open, or you can just double click on the file, and Access 2007 opens the database. Once its open, the Getting Started screen disappears, and then you can begin the work within the Access 2007 interface.
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