Hello again and welcome back to our course on Access 2016.
In the preceding section we created a first database, a contacts database.
I’ve just restarted Access and if you look at the start screen sure enough there is the
name of that contacts database in my Recent Databases list.
So the first thing I’m going to do is to open that.
Note the welcome screen.
I am going to close that for the moment.
And what I’m going to do now is to save this database using a name of my choosing
and I’m going to save it into the course files folder.
Now I mentioned to you right near the beginning of the course that I’ll be setting various
exercises.
This is not one of those exercises but it’s a good idea for you to create a database using
one of the templates and to save that in a set location as well just to make sure that
you’re familiar with that procedure.
Now the first thing to note is that in order to save this database I need to close any
open objects such as tables and forms.
We have no form open.
I opened the welcome form just now.
But we need to close the contacts table.
So I’m going to close that using its little Close button there, Close Contact List.
Now there are no objects in the database open and I can go to File, click on Save As, click
on the Save As button here, and I have browsed to the course files folder.
Now the standard file type for an Access desktop database is ACCDB.
So the extension is .accdb but I’m going to change the file name.
And I’m changing it to Contacts01.
So that’s the name of my contacts database.
All I do now is click on Save.
Now note that once I save it I have to go through the enabling routine again.
Now that’s not a problem because I know that this is a safe database.
I’m now working on Contact01 in the course files folder.
What I’m going to do now is to close Access yet again and I’m going to start it up yet
again.
Now of course this time when I start it up as you would expect you can see both of those
databases in my recent databases list.
Note that they are now separate databases.
Now clearly if I wanted to work on Contact01 then I just click on it and away I go.
But we also have the Open Other Files option there.
If I click on that I get there also a list of recently opened files and when they were
last opened.
And as you can see both of those were opened today.
Now notice that if the database I want to open isn’t in the list on the right there
I have options for where to open a database from.
And amongst the options that I have are the OneDrive cloud storage that I get as part
of this particular Office 365 subscription.
If you’re using an Office 365 copy of Access 2016 you should see OneDrive here.
There is a Sites – TobyA option there.
That is actually a SharePoint option.
If you do have SharePoint as part of your Office 365 subscription then you’ll have
access to SharePoint there as well.
I’m not going to talk about the interaction between Access and SharePoint on this course.
And then I also have another available OneDrive cloud storage facility there as well.
Exactly which of those features, OneDrive and SharePoint, that you see will depend on
your account.
You may not see anything at all there if you’re using a bought copy of Access 2016 or Office
2016 and you don’t have OneDrive, for example, as part of an Office 365 subscription.
But you should see This PC and This PC will give you an option to browse to the folder
containing the database that you want to open.
There’s also a Browse button at the bottom here.
And if you do have say a OneDrive facility but it doesn’t appear in the list here you
can add it by clicking on Add a Place.
And then let’s say you’ve actually got an Office 365 SharePoint facility, you can
click and find that here.
OneDrive again you can click and find that there as well.
So if you’ve got either OneDrive or SharePoint access and they don’t appear in the list
on the left you follow through there to set them up.
Let’s go back though to browse and let me browse to the course files folder.
And of course there is my single ACCDB Contact01.
And of course I could select that and open it from here as well.
But I’m actually not going to open that at the moment.
What I’m going to do is to create another new database.
Now in order to create a new database I’m going to use the New button up here.
So click on New and I once again see that list of templates.
And on this occasion I’m going to choose the very first option, Blank Desktop Database.
So we’re going to start from scratch and we’re going to start from scratch to work
on the course database that I’m going to use for most of the demonstrations during
the course.
I will actually be using one or two others as well but most of the time it will be this
particular database.
Now I’m starting out with it blank.
It gets a default file name and location.
Well I’m going to change those.
First of all let me change the location to the course files folder.
And I’m going to change the name of the database.
Now this database is going to be a database for a travel company that runs some rather
exclusive types of tours, adventure, wildlife and so on.
And they’ve got rather a posh name.
They’re called Esprit de Tour.
So I’ve called their database EspritDeTour.
It’s going to go through quite a few versions this database so let’s start it off at version
one.
So click on Create and there is my new database.
Now if you look along the very top of the screen you’ll see that long name that it’s
got there.
I’ll sort that out later on.
Don’t worry about that now.
But notice in the list of objects on the left that it’s almost empty.
In fact there’s one table.
And when you create a blank database you get a single table to get you started.
It’s got nothing in it.
It’s not been designed, not really thought about.
We’re going to start working on that table in a few sections from now but I have now
got my new database.
Now one other thing to show you about working in Access is if I click on File on the top
left there again one of the options is Close.
And if I click on Close I don’t close Access.
I close the current database.
And Access is still open but it has no database open.
So it’s perfectly legitimate to have Access open with no database.
And then if I click on File again I could create a new one, I could open an existing
one, etcetera.
And the only other thing I’d like to cover in this section is one of the items on that
What’s New list that we saw earlier on in the course.
I mentioned this quite briefly before.
It’s Templates get a modern look and feel.
If you now read that section of the What’s New you’ll see that five of the database
templates had a bit of sort of makeover in Access 2016.
Asset Tracking, Contacts, Event Management, Students, and Task Management.
And of course Contacts is the one that we’ve already used to create our contacts database
that we’ll also have available to use later on for demonstration purposes.
It also talks in this section about those getting started forms.
And as I mentioned, I’ll come back to those getting started forms a little bit later on.
So it’s well worth now having seen what you’ve seen now to go back and have a look
at that section and maybe take a look at those other database templates as well.
But that’s it for this section.
I’ll see you in the next one.