- Understanding Access's Approach to Application Design
- Creating an Access Application from a Template File
- Touring the Contact Management Application
- Using the Switchboard Manager
- Exploring Form Design View and VBA Class Modules
- Downloading Templates from the Microsoft Office Update Site
- Saving a Form As a Data Access Page
- In the Real World--Putting What You've Learned in Perspective
Downloading Templates from the Microsoft Office Update Site
Microsoft's Office Tools on the Web site (http://office.microsoft.com) offers a Template Gallery link to collection of Access 2000 databases (.mdb files) disguised as templates. Most of the templates duplicate the functions of the .mdz template files provided with Access 2002 but have a different main switchboard design. Unlike the Access 2002 templates, the Office Update databases include sample data. Access 2000 templates work fine in Access 2002.
To view the current list of templates and give one of the templates a test run, follow these steps:
Click the Templates from Microsoft.com link under the New from Template topic of the task pane to connect to the Office Update site. (Reopen the task pane if necessary by choosing View, Toolbars, Task Pane.)
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In the Office Update Worldwide window, click the location link closest to you--United States, for this example--to receive a location cookie and open the Template Gallery page. (If you've already specified a location at an earlier date, you won't see this page.) Type Access in the Search for Templates text box (see Figure 3.37), and click Go.
Figure 3.37 The Template Gallery page's selections primarily are for Microsoft Word. Type Access in the Search for Template text box and click Go to open a list of Access .mdb files.
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In the Search Results page (see Figure 3.38), scroll to a template and click its name to open a license page. Scroll to the bottom of the license page and click I Accept to continue. The license page appears only when selecting your first template from the site.
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In the page for the template you selected, click Edit in Microsoft Access to start the download to the My Documents folder (see Figure 3.39). When downloading completes, Access starts if it isn't running, and displays the application's main switchboard form.
Figure 3.38 The Search Results list displays the available templates for Access 200x.
Figure 3.39 Clicking the Edit in Microsoft Access link downloads the .mdb file to the My Documents folder and opens its Main Switchboard form.
Figure 3.40 shows the Main Switchboard form for the Students and Classes database (TG_7.mdb). Switchboards of the Office Update templates use large command buttons with >> captions whose visibility is determined by the mouse position in the main region of the form. Other than the switchboard graphics and minor changes to the VBA Class Object code to handle command button visibility, the Office Update templates behave the same as databases created from the Access 2002 templates.
Figure 3.40 The Office Update templates' command buttons aren't visible until you pass the mouse pointer over the caption.