Simple MS Access 2010 Tutorial

Before creating a database, prepare the following:

1. List of data and group them accordingly;
2. Determine the flow of the transaction, and draw a flowchart;
3. If possible, draw a relational chart, to be able to determine how each group of data is related to one another.

I will be doing a simple address book database, we will start with something simple, one table-database. I will create a
new manual for a multi-table database later.

D1. Diagram 1

An address book is composed of contacts. Each contact is composed of the name of the person, address and phone
number.
I. Creating an Access Database
On the lower right of the screen, you will see a create button, but before you click create, on the filename textbox,
type the name of your database.

Steps:
1. On the filename textbox, type adressbook then click create.

2. Once you click create you will be navigated to your database workspace.
3. On the left of the Table Tools-Datasheet Tab/Ribbon you’ll see a View button. Click the View button.

4. Click the View button, and choose Design View. A Save As menu screen will appear, type Contacts and
click OK button.

5. MS Access will bring you to another screen view. This is what we call the design view.

Design view lets you create your own fields in your table. A field in database is an allocation for a
certain item. Based on diagram 1, we have 3 fields, namely NAME, ADDRESS and NUMBER.
Common practice in database design is to further breakdown the fields to its basic components; this will
make it easier to create queries or searches later on.
6. After the breakdown, you have to decide what data type to assign to each field

Data Type Description

Text You may type in any alphabetical/numerical data that you desire -
up to a maximum of 255 characters
Memo This field is for lots of text. You can have up to 32,000 characters.
Number This field is for numbers where you want to add, subtract,
multiply, divide, average, and do numerical calculations.
Date/Time Dates and Times.
Currency Money
AutoNumber This field is an "automatic" counter that assigns a number each
time you put data into a new field.
Yes/No This is a "True/False" or "Yes/No" type of field.
OLE Object This means "Object Link Embedding" which indicates you can
insert a graphic, picture, sound, etc.

The lower part of the design window is what you call the field property. This area lets you control or
customize each field. One of the most important properties is the FIELD SIZE, lets you control how
many letters/characters each field can accept.

7. Create the list of fields, its corresponding data types and field size.
Field Name Data Type Field Size
ID AutoNumber
Fam_name Text 20
Giv_name Text 25
Mid_name Text 20
Street Text 30
Brgy Text 20
City Text 20
Tel_no Text 11
Mob_no Text 11
8. Click view again and click datasheet view. When prompted to save the table, click, yes.

9. In the datasheet view, you can enter your data.