Microsoft Access Tutorial - Beginners Level 1 (Quick Start)

hi there jamie here today at teachers  tech hope you're having a great day today   today i want to show you how to use microsoft  access so this is a beginner's tutorial in   microsoft access i'll have a series of different  videos that will follow up and build on each one   so today we'll go over the basics of microsoft  access making sure you know how to create your   first database let's get started today  on teachers tech with microsoft access

so why would you want to use microsoft access  versus microsoft excel well microsoft access is   a database management software that allows you  to store an incredible amount of information   and then you can create relationships between  that information so this makes it easier to   find or sort what you're looking for and it  makes it simpler to use than something versus   microsoft excel so what you might find after you  start to learn microsoft access is that some of   the things you're doing in microsoft excel might  be best suited in microsoft access when you're   looking to create that database now today's lesson  will be very simple we're just going to create a   contact list inside microsoft access then we'll  create some queries and reports and forms around   this information let's get started with our first  database in microsoft access everything will be

time stamped in this video so what that means  if you take a look down below in the description   of the video you'll see different numbers and  you can click on the time and it will take you   to that part of the video very quickly all right  let's start with our microsoft access new database   i already have microsoft access open here it's  part of my office 365 subscription that i have   i'm going to go ahead and start a blank database  but i just want to point out something before that   uh as i go through this here today and  explain the basics after you kind of know that   when i take a look at new these are all  these different templates that you can use   now once you go through this will help you  understand how the templates are made so i kind   of suggest that after you learn the basics try  looking at some templates and seeing what they   did because they're great to use and will  save you a lot of time all right so starting   a blank database you can see that i have right  here or even if i'm at home the blank database   is here these are any previous ones that i've had  open that i've been working on that it will save   i'm going to go ahead and click on this and what  you'll notice right away is that it has to be   saved before you continue so other things like  microsoft excel or microsoft word you just open   it up and it's not saved you do have to save this  first so what i'm going to do is just call this   demo and i'm going to call this contact list just  like this because that's what we're creating today   now i can say where i want it to go i'm just going  to leave it into this spot right here you could   click the folder and pick somewhere else if you  wanted to but i'm going to go ahead and hit create   right now and we have our first database created  now when i created my first blank database here

i have a table that opened up with it this  table hasn't been saved or anything yet but   what i want to point up at is up top of the tab  so since this is this was created here we have   these tabs up here table fields and table that  are open here that's because the table is there   as we open up different objects you're going to  notice that these change now i just want to start   with the different tabs up top here and if you're  familiar with microsoft you'll understand how the   different tabs and ribbon works so i'm going to  start over here on the file if you ever need to go   back you can see now this gets to back where we  started where i could open i can save through   here i can print and do all the different things  that are very similar that to microsoft word   or microsoft excel if i hit this arrow again it  brings me to here now i just want to point out the   with home here you can see right away and i want  to point out the different views now as soon as   i go to design view you can see it's asking me  to save my table and i can name my table here   also so i'm just going to call this demo contact  here just like that and hit ok and you can see   it changed if i just bring this or you can see  what it has is the name of that table is demo   contact here all right so in the table design is  over here and we'll get to that a little bit later   but if i can look at home now i can switch my  views and you kind of go back and forth from   these views quite a bit that was design view and  then we have our data sheet view like this and   i'll explain the differences to those later if you  take a look through the home tab and check out   the ribbon you get to see everything of the sort  and filter through part through here we have our   records and we have our find text  formatting so if you're familiar with microsoft   uh products some of this stuff looks very  similar it can be kind of overwhelming when   you see a new program like this but we're not  going to go through everything here today i'm   just going to break it down to what pertains  to the simple table that we're creating today   now we also do have our create uh tab up  here and if we take a look at the ribbon   this is where i could create more tables and  you can create more than one table and this and   then have those connected through relationships  but we'll get to that in a different video   you can see where we have table design queries  and different parts of it so this is thinking   about all the different things that you create  inside here we have our forms our reports   macros and code as i mentioned we are going to  create a report we're going to be creating forms   and queries and we already do have our  first table so this is the part of today   that we'll be looking at we have external  data so with external data we can import uh   something like microsoft excel so if you had a  contact list that with all the information you   could bring it into microsoft access and actually  i am going to show you how to do that in today's   video to save you some time so you don't have to  go through and enter all the different contacts   just for an example to play with it but i'll  show you that later so this is where you're   going to bring in your information we had our  have our database tools and this is where we can   kind of build our relationship object dependencies  again a lot of this information here we won't get   into this video today and you have your help all  right so let's get started going to our demo uh   demo contact table and start designing it so i  know we already have a table here but actually

what i want to do is delete this table and then  create a new one from scratch and to do this   i could right click and you notice that there is  a delete right here but it's actually not going to   delete because i have it open so i'll show you  what i mean so if i go ahead and hit delete it   says you can't delete it now what you need to do  is make sure that this is closed down so i'm just   going to hit the x here now the table is closed so  if i go ahead and hit delete now it's asking me if   i want to go ahead and delete this i'm going to  say yes and now that is gone so that's you got to   make sure that your table is closed before you  can delete it so now i can go up to the create   tab click on table and i have a new table started  here i haven't saved anything yet and to do this   i could right click over here and hit save like  this or as soon as i try to change views like   i showed you before if i go to design view this  is another way to get there if i click on it and   give it a name and this time i'll just call this  contact demo i'll switch around and hit okay now i   have that and that table will be saved there i do  want to point out down below in the bottom right   hand corner you can change your views here too so  if i you can see i can go from the datasheet back   to design view there's a few different ways even  if i right click on it here i have my design view   that i can switch back and forth between different  things here too so i so just so you know you can   switch those very quickly in all these different  ways just by trying a few different right clicks

so notice up top our table has a name here  same one contact table shows that it's saved   and everything and it also created this right  across here this id we're creating a very simple   contact list here so we actually don't need this  for this example i'm going to right click on this   and notice i can go ahead and select delete rows  it's going to prompt me in making sure that i want   to do this i'm going to go ahead and hit yes on  this again we don't need this for this example   here today now at this time i'm just going to go  ahead and start creating the field names and so   inside microsoft access we're going to have fields  in these tables and when we put in the person's   name that's going to be the record so what is the  field name for this one well i'm going to put down   it's going to be first name so i'm just going  to go ahead and type first name like so what's   the data type in it usually it's going to be short  text so this is you can see it's obvious that it's   going to be short text but if i drop down you can  see there's lots of different choices like number   or long text so if it was paragraphs or if you  wanted to do a number because you can actually add   in here you can look for specific numbers you can  select things like date or time and you can see   from hyperlink there's lots of different options  again this is a very simple database that we're   creating today i'm just creating a short text  here and this is where i can give a description   to this field name so i think this is pretty  self-explanatory and it's good to keep your   field names self-explanatory but if you do need  to give it a description go ahead and write in   there so if i go ahead and hit tab notice it goes  to the next line now so what i want to do at this   point is just type in last name like so this is  going to be short text from my drop down list just   like before i can select that description and  go on so i'll just keep through going through   and populating uh these different ones so i just  went through finish off the fields that i need   for today's example you can see like this go ahead  and hit pause on the video and just enter the ones   the way i did or else if there's something  different or maybe you don't want as many   just don't put in as many and then when you switch  over to the other view like i will do now to the

datasheet view it's going to ask you to save it  go ahead and hit yes so at this point you can see   that across the top are all the fields that we  created now just this is just like excel we can   stretch out these columns if i double click in  between uh any of these it'll size out quicker   to exact what it needs but this is where i enter  my records in so for an example i'll put myself   in here so i put my first name i'll tab over i'll  put my next name and i can click into the spots   too i'll just put make up an address here will  be this and will be uh sixth street and today   will be in phoenix let's say so the city like so  and will be a z give it a zip and a phone number and so you can go through enter what you  want and i'll just give it my teachers tech   email just like this so when i get to the end if  i hit enter now i have another spot for a record   i just want to point out at the very bottom  if you look and it's kind of cut off for this   on this computer i don't know why i should have  checked that before but we can see record and   i have two of two even though i haven't entered  another one it's on the second line i can go back   to one of one and as i go through you can see i  can go through and it's ready for the next one   there is the ser the search so as soon as i was  typing in my name it will find what i'm looking   for so the search is going to look through all  your different records that you have and you   can even create a new record so if i go ahead and  hit new blank record it will go to the next line   or i can do it the way i showed you when i was  done i just hit enter and went to the next line   so i'm going to go enter some more information  here and you go ahead to do that too let's say   we put in about three or four or maybe five in  here and then we'll go on to the next step if

you want more records inside of your table  uh like these ones that i have right here   you can actually import them from an excel  sheet and i have the excel sheet down below in   the description if you click on it open it up and  download it and then you can import it in and i'm   going to show you how to do that right now before  we go on so you have more records to work with   so this is very quick to import from excel  and how i'm going to do this is just by right   clicking but before i do that i'm going to  close down this table so close the table down   and now what i want to do is right click here and  notice that there is import i just want to point   out we can import in other ways too you can see we  can do our sources from file to excel so a lot of   times what i do is just right click right here and  import and this is going to be excel so at this   point i have a file on my desktop so it's going  to matter where you save this file to so if i go   browse the one we want is contact demo and that's  what it will be named when i place it down below   i'm going to hit open and now i want to append  a copy of the records for the table i can make a   brand new table if i wanted to with it but you can  also bring it in so i have just my name in right   now so if i hit append and i'm going to go to i  only have the one table so it's contact demo i'm   going to hit ok and it shows me the columns and  everything have to match in this case the names   that i have match exactly what i created the  table as and so if you go through you can take   a look at how it's going to look i'm going to  hit next and import the table that's going to be   what i want i'd like to the wizard to analyze my  table so if you want to do that i'm not going to   click that i'm just going to hit finish and at  this point close it might   not look like anything has been done but now if  i go and open up this table here you can see all   those names that were from the excel spreadsheet  are now in this table so we'll have more records   to play with and you can go through if you wanted  to remember you can size these to the way you want   to make it easier for yourself to read if that's  what you're going to do and if you take a   look at the very bottom you can see that there's  51 records from here where we could continue on   now let's go over to our form and make  one of those in the database here and   access so now i want to show you how to create a  form in microsoft access and what a form does for

you gives you another way that you can enter a new  record into your database or you can actually go   through and search and look for different records  also so how we do this is i'm just going to make   sure i'm selected on this database here and  i'm going to go up to create and we've created   a table from over here and now i want to create a  form so if i go ahead and click on form instantly   this pops up and remember it doesn't hasn't saved  yet it's just there and i'll save it in a moment   but right away if i start arrowing through going  to the next record you can see how it goes through   i can even click on create a new record at this  point but i'll do that a little bit more   in a moment because the first thing i want to  show you are the different views and we're going   to switch views just right up here there's a forum  view layout view design view i just want to show

you quickly design view because you can change the  look how your form looks so if i click on design   view you can see right away that all the fields  that were there pulled up from the table but   you maybe want it to be capitalized here so if  i go in here i could quickly go here and start   typing something else like this or i could even  change it up uh from it because these names here   could be anything you want this is the information  that will be getting pulled from the table from   those fields now i can even do more i could go  through if i go back to home and formatting you   can see there's different just like microsoft word  i could change the font size on any of these i   could stretch out if you watch and get the handles  you can see how different ones will   change the size you just have to get the right  handles here as you hover over and you can see   you stretch it out you can make these shorter here  you can start changing all these things around to   kind of adapt it to getting the way you want it  to look now the other thing i just want to point   out really quickly here and i won't be going into  it if i go to form design there's lots of controls   you can actually add into your form to take a  look at these from attachment controls to radio   buttons there's lots of different choices and i'll  get into this more in a different video for what   we're doing today we don't really need to change  this form too much so that was under form design   now i'm going to go ahead and save this form here  so i'm just going to if i exit it will ask me   to save it or i could right click and hit save and  i'll just leave it as ok now you notice i have my   tables here i have my forms if you don't see them  check to see that you're under all access objects   because you might just have if you just go to  tables all you're going to do is see tables but if   you go all access it will show i also have the two  opening i have my table here and i have my form   here so i'm going to change my view here i'm not  going to change a lot of different looks in this   but you can play around with that how you see fit  i'm going to go to my form view here just like

this you can see how the first name is changed  and highlighted a little bit bigger i could go   through and the first thing i want to show you you  can make uh modifications through here so see how   the number ends with four or five if i wanted to  go and maybe it was going to be two three and if   i go through i'm gonna check my go through and go  back to this and it was the first name mine and   notice it says two three so whatever i did in the  form over here it updated my tables with the   correct information so you can make those edits  inside your form to a record and it will change it   everywhere so the other thing i just want to point  out you can go through and uh and go through just   like i showed you the different records and go  next record you can go to the end   you can create a new blank record so if i start  typing in something here so if i was going to put   we'll just go with tom brady here and we'll just  put tampa i don't have to fill out everything here   let's say we'll just leave it there and as i go  through and i'll go next record that is going   to be added to my record of information  so if i go back now you can see that it's there   and if i entered another one i can see the  numbers that are going to be increasing here   so we'll talk about we'll just say drew and we'll  go bledsoe like so and then uh we'll just leave   it and then we'll enter another one and the number  keeps incr increasing we're at 54. now each time i   go through and i can go through and edit those and  add more information as i uh if i needed it i had   the update information so that's just a little bit  about the forms creating a form to help you input   or even go through an examine and remember you can  search in here so if i search if i was looking for   i'll just type my last name and notice how quickly  it opened up this view in the form so if i again   if i was typing brady like so it's going to find  that record and i can enter more information for

him so that's a little bit about forms and how  they connect with the tables and how you can   use them to input more records or to search the  records that you have next what we're going to do   under the create one we're going to create a query  based on the information the records that we have   so a query is asking a question to all the records  that you have in your database and then it will   give quickly give you back the answer that you  searched so i'm going to show you how to do this   simple one here today and because we just have  simple information with this contact list i'm   going to be under create and we're going to create  we're going to use the wizard here so i'm going to   go ahead and click on this it opens up this new  query as i mentioned this is a quite a simple one   so i'm going to leave it as a simple query wizard  for this example if you're following along i'm   going to hit ok what is it what i'm trying to ask  here so i'm going to say i do want the first name   and i'm moving it over here i want the last name  we'll say city over here i'm gonna say   email so i'll just leave it like that those four  fields and when i hit next uh open the query and   view the information that's all i'm gonna do i'm  gonna modify this in a moment in a different way   but i'm going to hit finish and it gives me back  uh everybody just in that format that i asked well   i can get more specific now on the questions  that i ask because really i haven't really   asked it anything it just is giving me everything  back i'm going to go and change the view   i can save this if i want here so i could save  it i could change my view this way or go back

to the home but i'll go to design view and at this  point you can see these are the four fields that i   chose and what i want it to look for if i go under  city here i'm just going to type phoenix here so   if i just type phoenix like so click off of it  notice that it puts it in quotation marks because   it knows that it's text in there if i go ahead and  run this again just click run now it's bringing   back just what i was asking it i asked it hey how  many are in from phoenix out of this record and it   brought me back those two so i can go ahead and  modify these even still so if i go back and i'm   going to click on this view again i can bring more  in so i have my email maybe i want their phone   number here so i know that's one of my fields  that i have i could drag this down into here   run it again and now i have their phone number  there too so i've asked it another question and it   got even more specific i'm going to go back again  and click on this so at this point you can choose   whether you want the field to show or not on the  display it will still be part of the question so   if i don't want the city there if i go ahead  and click off of it and run it notice that the   city isn't there anymore but it still looked up  people from that city it's just not displaying it   i just want to point out and i'm not going over  it in this tutorial but with these if you were   using numbers you could be looking for things like  greater than or perform operations there's lots   of different things that you could add or that  you could do in the different criteria within   these queries and i'll get into that more in later  tutorials but i just wanted to point out how you   can do these simple queries so now we've created  our table we've created a form and we're asking   questions through queries let's end this tutorial  here today with a report in microsoft access   so to end this tutorial today i want to  show you how you can create a report and

so you could use this for printing or maybe  you wanted to send it to somebody as a pdf   but they're quite simple to do and usually what  we're going to do is base it upon a query that we   created so i wouldn't go to the table and create  a report off of that because i'd have you know   if you had thousands and thousands of names  and everything that wouldn't make much sense   but what i would do is go to a query that i  got the specific information that i wanted   and then i'd go up to create and you can see  there's reports here report design report wizard   since i have this query selected i'm just going  to go to report you could go ahead and play   with the wizard if you want but i'm going to go  and click report and right away it gives me the   reports here so based on the phoenix trends  that i was looking for i have it right here   so i can change the view of this like i've shown  you before with other ones if i go up to view   we could take a look at design view so i  could make a change here so maybe this is my   i'll just say my phoenix friends just like so and  you could go through and adjust different things   the way you want to change in there so the other  thing that i just if i go back to my different   views you can see there's print preview so if i  go to print preview this shows me what it would   be looking like if i was going to print it we can  change it to landscape here and it's telling me   that it's the width and everything on it  uh how it's fitting so we can change these   different things we have our page set up we have  our margins and our size we can go ahead and hit   print here and then it's going to print to you  know if you did want to print it to your printer   or pdf you have those different options so i  hope you like this walk through our beginners   uh tutorial of microsoft access this is a very  powerful program that can be overwhelming to a   lot of people when they first see it that's why i  wanted to keep this uh simpler this tutorial here   today on teachers tech let me know what you're  looking to learn in microsoft access i do plan   to do a series that each one kind of advancing  through uh getting a little bit more of the   features that it can do in table relationships  that you can make it even more powerful thanks   for watching this time on teachers tech i'll see  you next time with more tech tips and tutorials