Setting up a standard Access database
Part 2: Customizing the fields
For some fields, you want to make sure the data is reported exactly the same. For example, for my database, rather than reporting the actual grade level, I reported the broad categories of “Pre-school”, “Elementary School” and so on. Now, if I manually type these in, any variation is seen as a different type of input. So for example, “preschool” is different from “Pre-school” which is different from “Pre-School”. What this means is that if I tried to filter by “Pre-school” anything that was not entered exactly that way would not show up. Here’s a solution that gives you drop-down options for the values you want in different fields:
- While your table is open, switch to the “Design View” using the icon with a ruler and triangle (leftmost icon in this screen-cap).
- You’ll be taken to a screen that looks like (Click on image to see full-size):
- Find the field that you want to add “options” to. To the right of the field name, it would most likely say “Text”.
- If you click on that, it becomes a drop-down menu itself. Select “Lookup Wizard…”
- A new menu pops up. On the first screen, change the radio-button to select “I will type in the values that I want” and click on “Next”.
- You’ll come to a screen that looks like:
- Enter the values you want as each option, hitting the “Tab” key in-between each.
- When you’re done, you can click on “Finish”
- Switch back to “Datasheet View” and save if it asks you to save your work.
- Go to the field that you just created the drop-down for and try it out. If you don’t want to use the drop down, you can also start typing, and the drop-down should automatically go to the option that matches what you are typing.
