Forms

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Forms
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• Forms provide a more convenient user interface
  for such things as adding new records or editing
  or deleting existing records in a table.
• They can also be created to customize the entire
  user interface to the database itself.

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• The following is an example of a form to be used
  to display records from a single table. This form
  can also be used to edit, add to, or delete
  records from this table.
• Here it is being displayed in Form View.

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• Various parts of this form represent
• Bound controls
• Unbound controls
• Calculated controls
• Also on this form are 4 buttons, at the bottom.

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• The text Birthdate is an example of an unbound
  control, while the place where the corresponding
  value 10/20/75 is displayed is a bound control.
• Unbound controls are taken from field names or
  other text the user designs into the form.
• Bound controls come from data in the database.

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• The text Age is another unbound control, but
  the value 25 displayed next to it is an example
  of a calculated control.
• The number 25 is not in the underlying table, but
  is calculated from the Birthdate field using the
  expression (Date()-Birthdate)/365.

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• To create a form like this, first use the Form
  Wizard.
• Then switch to Form Design View to make any
  desired modifications, including altering the
  layout of the form and adding other controls to
  it.

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• When in Form Design View, a toolbox toolbar is
  displayed.
• Among the buttons on this toolbar are one for
  adding text labels (e.g., Age), another for
  adding text boxes for calculated controls (where
  the appropriate expression can be entered), and
  yet another to add buttons to the form.

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• To specify such things as the formatting of data
  displayed on the form, use the Design View and
  right click on the control whose formatting you
  want to change and select Properties.
• Here you will see many details of the controls
  that you can potentially alter if desired.

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• Another available view of a form is the Datasheet
  View.
• This looks almost identical to the Datasheet View
  of the underlying table, except that what is
  displayed in each row is exactly the values
  displayed on the form, including any calculated
  controls.

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Switchboard

• Another type of form used as a top-level user
  interface to a database is a switchboard.
• To create a switchboard, do Tools gt Database
  Utilities and choose Switchboard Manager.
• The switchboard created this way is actually a
  form based on a Switchboard Items table.

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• Furthermore, if you go to the Tools gt Startup
  dialog box and select your Switchboard as the
  form to open when Access starts running on your
  database, users can interact with it using only
  your customized interface.
• Here is an example

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Forms with subforms

• Sometimes it is useful to create a form based on
  data stored in multiple tables.
• In this case there may be a main form to display
  records from one table, along with a subform to
  display records from a related table.
• Here we consider the following example

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• In this case there is a many-to-one relationship
  between loans and customers (meaning that one
  customer may have more than one loan, but each
  loan is for just one customer).

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• In this case it might be reasonable to want a
  form to display customer data drawn not only from
  the Customers table, but also the corresponding
  data from the Loans table on all loans for a
  particular customer.

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• The resulting form will consist of a main form
  based on the Customers table and a subform based
  on the Loans table.
• We can create this form easily using the Form
  Wizard.
• Here is how it looks

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• As is typical when displaying a main form
  together with a subform, the main form is
  diplayed in Form View and the subform is
  displayed in Datasheet View.
• However, the view used for each can be changed
  independently, as desired.