Strings

String-Based Data Types   Introduction to Strings A string is text made of a readable letter, a symbol, a word or a group of words. When working on a table in the Datasheet View, to create a Text-based field, on the table, click Click to Add and select Text. If some columns exist already, to insert a text-based field between two columns, click the column header, or a cell under the column, that will precede it. On the Ribbon, click Fields. In the Add & Delete section, click Text . If a column has been created already and it is using a data type other than text, to change it, click its column header or a cell under its column. On the Ribbon, click Fields. In the Formatting section, click the arrow of the Data Type combo box and select Text If you are creating the table in Design View, to configure a field that can hold any type of string, specify its Data Type as Text: A Text data type allows the user to type any kind of characters or group of characters. This field can hold up to 255 characters. Practical Learning: Introducing Strings Start Microsoft Access To create a new database, click the contents of the File Name text and type Real Estate2 Click Create Double-click ID, type PropertyID, and press Enter Double-click Add New Item and type Property # Right-click the Table1 tab and click Save Set the name to Properties and click OK Right-click the tab and click Design View Complete the list of fields with the following   Field Name Default Value PropertyID   Property #   Property Type Unknown Condition Unknown Address   City   State   ZIP Code   Save the table Field Size The size of a string is usually considered as the number of characters it contains or may hold. If you have just created a Text-based field, whether in the Datasheet View or Design View, its default size is automatically set to 255 characters. This default value is too long in most cases (in some previous versions of Microsoft Access, the default size was 50). In some circumstances, you may need to set a different value. You can therefore decrease or increase this size for any number between 1 and 255: To change the allowable number of characters of a Text-based field:  If you are working in the Datasheet View, on the Ribbon, click Fields. In the Properties section, click Field Size and change the value: If you are working in the Design View, in the top section, click the name, data type, or description of the column. To specify the maximum number of characters that a Text column can contain, in the lower section of the table, click Field Size and type the desired number. When setting the Field Size property by itself, the database would make sure that the user can only type so many characters. For example, it is very unlikely to have a first name of a person that is 50 characters. In this case, you can safely reduce the number of characters to 20 or 30. On the other hand, if you are creating a field whose length is hard to predict, you can set the length to a reasonable value. There are other ways you can decrease the number of characters that are allowed in a field. Over all, you should be able to predict the types of values that would be entered in the field. Practical Learning: Setting Field Sizes In the upper section of the view, click Property # and press F6 to move the caret to the lower section of the view As the caret is on the Field Size field, type 10 In the top section of the table, click Property Type In the lower section of the table, click Field Size and type 40 Set the other field sizes as follows:   Field Name Field Size Property # 10 Property Type 40 Condition 40 Address 100 City 50 State 2 ZIP Code 16 Save the table To change the view, in the Design tab of the Ribbon, click the View button Enter the following records:   Address City State 1640 Lombardo Ave Silver Spring MD 10315 Hacht Rd College Park MD 6366 Lolita Drive Laurel MD 9002 Palasko Hwy Falls Church VA Right-click the tab of the table and click Design View The Length of a String If a control has been created already, when performing an operation on it, you may want to know how many characters it has. To support this operation, Microsoft Access provides the Len() function. Its syntax is: Number Len(String)   When calling this function, pass a string in between double-quotes or the name of a control. The function then produces the number of characters in it. Creating a String in an Expression A string can be treated as a constant value. As such, it can be passed to a function. However you use a string, if you already know its value, you must include it in double-quotes. Examples are "@", "Q", "Validating", "Cross Over". You can also assign a string to a control. To do this, access the Property Sheet of the control and, in its Control Source, type = followed by the string inside double-quotes. Text Input Masks Because users can be tempted or distracted to enter just anything in a Text-based field, Microsoft Access provides techniques to control what goes in a field and what must be prevented. This is the role of a mask. A mask is a technique of creating sections, also called placeholders, in a field. A section can be configured to accept only a letter, only a digit, a character or a digit, any symbol, nothing, or to display a particular character that the user cannot change. When creating the mask, you will use some predefined characters and create a combination of your choice. Before creating a mask for a field, Microsoft Access comes with various masks you can apply to a field to control the user's input such as dates, times, US Social Security Number, Currency values, etc. To apply one of these masks, you can use the Input Mask Wizard. To do this, open the table in Design View. In the top section, click a column. Set its Data Type to Text. In the lower section of the table, click the Input Mask property and click its ellipsis button . This would start the wizard. The first page of the wizard displays the most regularly used masks, including those for US/Canada telephone number, US Social Security #, US ZIP code, date, time, etc: If you see a mask that suits you, you can check it by clicking the Try It text box. This would show the placeholders for the sections of characters that could be entered during data entry: If you see a mask you want to use, you can click it and click Next. If none of the masks suits your need, you can create a new one and add it to the list. To do this, you would click the Edit List button. This would bring the Customize Input Mask Wizard dialog box: By default, the Customize Input Mask Wizard offers four already created masks, including US/Canada phone number, US Social Security Number, US ZIP Code, and telephone extension number. You can check them by click the Next Record button in the bottom section of the dialog box. To create a new mask, you can click the New (Blank) Record button . After creating a new mask, you can click Close. Once you have located the desired mask, you can click it and click Next to continue. The second page of the wizard allows you to accept or customize the mask you had selected. Once you are ready, you can click Next. The third page presents an option that allows you to specify how the value in the field would be stored in the database. It presents two radio buttons and you can either accept the suggestion or select the other and click Next. The fourth page of the wizard doesn't do much. It simply lets you know that the wizard is ready to create the mask. Therefore, you can click Finish. If none of the masks provided by the wizard suits you, you can create your own. To do that, click the Input Mask property for the desired fields and uses the following characters to create the mask: Character Used to enter or accept 0 A single digit 9 A single digit or space # A digit, space, + or - L An alphabetical character ? A letter A A letter or a digit a A letter, a digit, or nothing & A character or space C A character, space, or nothing . A decimal place holder; for US English, this would be the period , Thousand separator; for US English, this would be a comma :;-/ Date and time separator, as specified in the Regional Settings of Control Panel < A letter; the letter will be converted to lowercase > A letter; the letter will be converted to uppercase ! Anything; the mask is filled from right to left for this position | Anything; the character that follows this one will be displayed itself. For example, if you type |L, the letter L would be displayed instead of being used a mask You can use any of these symbols to create a mask. If you want to include a word or sentence as part of the mask, type it in any section as desired. Here are examples of Custom Masks: Mask Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 LL dh fT Gm >LL\-00 WE-47     #0L 8f 16a 04t >LL\-000 WE-883     000\-000\-0000 265-387-6498     ##\-## 02-37 -9-5+ -6-35 &#\-L0\-## 5-u5-00     \(000") "000\-0000 (301) 294-6464     !\(999") "000\-0000"" ( ) 392-3873     00\-00\-00\-00 28-73-68-46     >00\-LLLL\-0 78-DRUG-9     >L<LLL Jean     >L<????????????? Helene Antananarivo     Practical Learning: Using Input Masks In the top section, click State In the lower section, click Input Mask, type >LL and press Enter In the upper section, click ZIP Code In the lower section, click the Input Mask field and click its ellipsis button When asked whether you want to save the table, click Yes In the first page of the wizard, click ZIP Code Click the Try It text box: Click Next Click Next Click the first radio button Click Next Click Finish Save the table To switch its view, right-click the Properties tab and click Datasheet View Enter the following records:   Address City State ZIP Code 1640 Lombardo Ave Silver Spring MD 20904-1136 10315 Hacht Rd College Park MD 20747 6366 Lolita Drive Laurel MD 20707-1014 9002 Palasko Hwy Tysons Corner VA       DC 20011   Alexandria VA 22024-2006 Operations on Strings   String Concatenation The & operator is used to add one string to another. It can also be used to append the contents of two controls or two expressions. This is considered as concatenating them. For example, it could allow you to concatenate a first name and a last name, producing a full name. The general syntax of the concatenation operator is: Value1 & Value2   The values on both sides can be constant values. Here is an example: "Eating" & " Food"   One value can be the name of a field and the other a constant value or both values can be the names of field. Just as you can involve two values in a concatenation, you can also use more than one. All of them be can constant strings. The operation can involve only the names of fields, or the expression can be a combination of constant values and names of fields. To concatenate more than two strings, you can use as many & operators between any two expressions as necessary. After concatenating the strings or values, you can assign the result to another value or expression using the assignment operator. The formula to use is: =Field1 & Field2 & Field_n   Here is an example: = LastName & ", " & FirstName Once again, you should include the name of a field in square brackets: =[LastName] & ", " & [FirstName] Here is another example: =[Address] & " " & [City] & " " & [State] & " " & [ZIPCode] & " " & [Country] This would display a complete address in a field. Trimming a String Trimming is an operation that gets rid of leading or ending spaces in a string. To remove any (empty) space on the left side of a string, you can use the LTrim() function. Its syntax is: LTrim(Expression As String) As String   The original string is passed as argument to the function. The function then removes any empty space from the left of the string and then the function returns the resulting string (without any space from the left section). If the original string does not have any leading space, the function would return the same string.  To remove any space on the right side of a string, you can use the RTrim() function. Its syntax is: RTrim(Expression As String) As String   The string to trim is passed as argument to the function. If that string has space on its right, this function would remove it and return the same string without any trailing space. Otherwise, the original string would be returned.  To remove empty spaces on both the left and the right sides of a string, call the Trim() function. Its syntax is: Trim(Expression As String) As String   The string is passed to the function. The function then removes empty spaces, if any on each side, and the function returns the new string.  Character Case Conversion There are various techniques you can use to convert a string from lowercase to uppercase and vice-versa. An alphabetical character is recognized as being in lowercase if it is one of the following characters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z. On the other hand, a character qualifies as uppercase if it is one of A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. All the other symbols are ignored even if on the keyboard you would press Shift to type them. To convert a lowercase character or string to uppercase, you can use the UCase() function. Its syntax is: UCase(Expression As String) As String This function takes a string as argument and examines each one of its characters. If a character is an alphabetic character in lowercase, it would be converted to uppercase. If the character is either an alphabetical character in uppercase or it is not an alphabetic character, it would be kept "as is".  To convert a character or a string from uppercase to lowercase, you can call the LCase() function. Its syntax is: LCase(Expression As String) As String   This function takes a string as argument and examines each one of its characters. If a character is an alphabetic character in uppercase, it would be converted to lowercase. The case of all the other characters would be ignored.  String Comparisons String comparison allows you to find out which one of two strings is longer or whether both strings are equal. When comparing two strings, the database engine checks lowercase and uppercase characters. To compare two strings, you can use the StrComp() function. Its syntax is: StrComp(Expression1 As String, Expression2 As String, Option) As Number The function takes two strings and an option as arguments. It then compares the strings: If the strings are the same, the function returns the number 0 If the first string is shorter than the second, the function returns the number -1 If the first string is longer than the second, the function returns 1 If one of the strings is null, the function returns null The third argument is optional, which means you don't have to provide it. If you want to influence the way the comparison is made, you can pass the third argument with one of the following values: -1, 0, 1, 0r 2.  Sub-Strings There are many operations you can perform on individual characters of a string. These include creating a sub-string, checking for a character, finding the position of a character, or deleting a character or characters. These operations can be valuable when creating objects such as login dialog boxes. To create a string that is made of one or more characters from the left side of a string, you can call the Left() function. Its syntax is: Left(Expression As String, Length As Number) As String   This function takes two arguments. The first argument is a string. The second argument specifies the number of characters to be considered from the first argument. The function would then create a new string that is made of the number of characters from the left side of the first argument. To illustrate, consider a string such Republic passed as the first argument and consider that you pass 3 as the second argument: Left("Republic", 3)   The function would consider the left 3 characters of the Republic argument and it would produce that sub-string. The resulting string would be Rep.  To create a string that is made of one or more characters from the right side of a string, you can call the Right() function. Its syntax is: Right(Expression As String, Length As Number) As String   This function also takes a string and a number as arguments. The function then creates a new string that is made of the number of characters from the left side of the first argument. Consider the following example: Right("Midnight", 5) The function would consider the last 5 characters of the Midnight argument and it would produce that sub-string. The resulting string would be night.  To create a string that is made of one or more characters from anywhere in a string, you can call the Mid() function. Its syntax is: Mid(Expression As String, start As Number, Optional Length) As String   This function also takes 3 arguments with required: a string, a starting position and an optional number. The function creates a new string using the first argument, from the start number. If you don't pass the third argument, the function returns a string from that position to the end of the string. Consider the following example: Mid("Ideal", 2)   This function would start creating a new function from the second position of Ideal to the end. The resulting string would be "deal".  If you pass the third argument, the function would create a new string from the start position. Then it would count the Length number of characters from the start position and it would create that new string. Consider the following example: Mid("Elizabeth", 2, 4) This would produce "liza". Locating a Character or a Sub String You can analyze a string and find out whether it contains a certain character or a sub string. If it does, you can get the position of the character or the substring and use that information as you see fit. To support this operation, you can use the InStr() function. Its syntax is: InStr(Optional start As Number, string1 As String, string2 As String) As Number   This function takes 3 arguments with 2 required. The second argument is the string to be examined. In it, the function would look for the character or string of the second argument. If you don't pass the first argument, the function would start from the beginning string of the second argument. If it finds it, it returns the position, a number from where the string2 string was found. If it doesn't find it, it returns 0.   Character or Sub-String Replacement When performing some operations on strings, you may want to find out whether a certain character or group of characters has been provided in a string. If so, you may want to replace it with a different character or with a new sub string. To perform this operation, you can call the Replace() function. Its syntax is: Replace(Expression As String, LookFor As String, ReplaceWith As String, start As Number, count As Number, Option) The Replace() function will look for the LookFor character or sub-string in the Expression string. If it finds it, then it will replace the LookFor character or sub string with the ReplaceWith character or sub-string. These first three arguments are required. Here is an example: Replace("Elisabeth", "s", "z") In this case, the function would look for s in Elisabeth. If it finds it, then it replaces it with z. If its doesn't find, it would not do anything.  By default, or in the absence of the other arguments, the Replace() function examines the Expression argument from start to end. If you don't want to consider all characters, you can pass the 4th argument to specify from what position of the Expression to work on. Then, the function would consider characters from that position to the end. If you want, you can ask the function to consider only a certain number of characters. To do this, pass a 5th argument as a number.

 

String-Based Controls: The Memo   Introduction The text box we have used to far is made to display only one line of text. In some cases, you may need to display more than one line of text. To support this, Microsoft Access provides the Memo data type. It primarily functions like the Text data type except that it can hold a longer text up to 64000 characters. The text is mostly provided as ASCII. This means that there is no formatting. To create a text box that can support multiple lines of simple text, if you are working in the Datasheet View of a table: Click Click to Add and click Memo in the list that appears Click under Click to Add. On the Ribbon, click Fields. In the Add & Delete section, click More Fields and click Memo To create a Memo field in the Design View of a table, add a new column or click the name of the field. Under Data Type, select Memo. Practical Learning: Introducing the Memo Type Open the College Park Auto Repair1 database you started in Lesson 15 and continued in Lesson 16 In the Navigation Pane, under Tables, double-click RepairOrders to open the table in Datasheet View Click the cell under Year On the Ribbon, click Fields In the Add & Delete section, click More Fields and click Memo As Field1 is still selected, type Problem Description to replace it and press Enter Right-click the title bar of the form and click Design View Click the first empty box under Field Name Type Recommendations and press Tab In the Data Type, select Memo Click the box corresponding to Description and type: Instructions given to the customer Close the table When asked whether you want to save, click Yes In the Navigation Pane, under Forms, right-click RepairOrders and click Design View On the form, click Order Identification and click it again In the Tools section of the Ribbon, click Add Existing Fields From the Field List, drag Problem Description and drop it in the bottom section of the Order Information tab Click the Order Summary tab From the Field List, drag Recommendations and drop it on the form Save the form Characteristics of a Memo A memo is primarily a text box. It uses all the characteristics of that control. To be distinguished from a regular text box, the memo uses some unique features. For example, the user can press Enter inside a memo to end a line or a paragraph. One of the most significant characteristics of a memo is to show one or two scroll bars when necessary. To let you show or hide the scroll bars, the Memo control is equipped with a property named Scroll Bars. To specify it, access the Property Sheet of a memo and click either Format or All. This property has two values. the default is None and means the memory would not display a scroll bar. If you set it to Vertical, when text is being entered in the memo or when the memo is asked to display some text, if the text is too long compared to the area reserved for the memo, it would show a vertical scroll bar. This would allow the user to scroll up and down. Practical Learning: Adding Scroll Bars to a Memo On the form, click Order Identification and double-click the Problem Description memo In the Property Sheet, click Format Click Scroll Bars, then click the arrow of its combo box and select Vertical On the form, click Order Summary and click the Recommendations memo In the Format tab of the Property Sheet, click Scroll Bars and type v to select Vertical Save the form Close the form The Rich Text Box Microsoft Office Access 2010 brought a new data type as the rich text. It allows a text box to display many lines, characters with different colors, words with different fonts, and paragraphs independently formatted. To create a rich text box in the Datasheet View of a table, click Click to Add. In the list that appears, click Rich Text: To insert a rich text field, while the table is displaying in the Datasheet View, click a cell under the column header that will precede it. On the Ribbon, click Fields. In the Add & Delete section, click More Fields. In the list, click Rich Text. Document and Object Linking   Introduction Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) is a technique that consists of adding in your database (not just database, but our discussion will stop to Microsoft Access databases as if OLE had to do only with Microsoft Access) an object that was created using another application. The technique used to include such an object is particularly easy. Over all, Microsoft Access does not care much what type of object you want to add to, or include in, your database. It is left to you to decide why you want to include the object and what type of object this would be. Some objects (can tremendously) increase the size of your database.  To use an OLE object in a field, you can work from the Datasheet View or the Design View of a table. To apply the OLE type in the Datasheet View of a table, after specifying the column name or clicking a cell under it, in the Data Type & Formatting section of the Datasheet tab of the Ribbon, click the arrow of the Data Type combo box and select OLE Object. If creating a table in Design View, to configure a field that can hold any type of string, specify its Data Type as OLE Object. Objects and Data Fields After setting the Data Type of a field to OLE Object, since the object is external, there are not too many options or properties provided by the table. The application in which you created or will create the object should control it. To actually include an external object into the field, whether using the table Datasheet View or the form in Form View, the user can right-click the field and click Insert Object. This would open the Insert Object dialog box that presents two options to create or select the object: If you want to use an application installed in your application to create the document, you can click the Create New radio button. Then, in the Object Type list, click the application and click OK If the object has been created and resides on a portable media (floppy disk, CD, DVD, etc), on your hard drive or on the network your computer is connected to, you can click the Create From File radio button and click Browse. This would bring the Browse dialog box that allows you to locate and select the document Practical Learning: Using OLE Objects From the resources that accompany these lessons, open the Bethesda Car Rental1 database In the Navigation Pane, under Tables, right-click Cars and click Design View Notice that the Picture field has its Data Type set to OLE Object. To switch the table to the another view, right-click its title bar and click Datasheet View Right-click the Model column header and click Freeze Fields Scroll to the right to make sure you can see both the Model and the Picture columns Right-click the first empty cell under Picture and click Insert Object On the Insert Object dialog box, click the Create From File radio button Click the Browse button In the Browse dialog box, using the tree list under the Directories label, locate the Cars folder that accompany these lessons and select it In the File Name list box, click accent.bmp In the Browse dialog box, click Open In the Insert Object dialog box, click OK On the Ribbon, click Home if necessary. In the Record section, click More -> Unfreeze All Fields Close the table When asked whether you want to save it (the question is stated because the structure of the table was modified when we froze the columns, not because we added the picture), click No In the Navigation Pane, under Forms, double-click Cars to open it Click the Next Record button to get to the second car Right-click the white empty area on the top-right section and click Insert Object On the Insert Object dialog box, click the Create From File radio button Click Browse Navigate to your Cars folder. From the list of File Names, click mercgdmarquis.bmp Click Open On the Insert Object dialog box, click OK In the same way, add a picture for each car included in the database. If the picture of a car does not appear in the list, skip it. This simply means that there is no picture   After using the form, close it The Hyperlink   Introduction As mentioned already, an object created with an external application can be added to a database and the object would be included "as is". When this is done, Microsoft Access uses an encryption technique to make the object become part of the database so you do not have to remember to include the object when distributing the database. Because of this, objects such as pictures can highly increase the size of a database. This can be inconvenient at times. Fortunately, the alternative to this scenario is to provide only a link to the document or file from the database to the external document. Besides the ability to provide a link to a document that could be a picture, you can also create a link to a document that provides more information about a record. You can also create a record that would hold the email addresses of the records on a table. All these can be taken care of through a hyperlink. As described in Lesson 13, a hyperlink a label that, when clicked, would open another document on the same computer, on a document on another connected computer, or on the Internet. Creating a Hyperlink To give a column the ability to display records that support hyperlinks, Microsoft Access provides the Hyperlink data type. If working in the Datasheet View To create a new field for hyperlinks, click Click to Add and click Hyperlink To change the type of a field to support hyperlinks, click a cell under its header. On the Ribbon, click Fields. In the Formatting section, click the arrow of the Data Type combo box and select Hyperlink To insert a column that would support hyperlinks, click a cell of the column that will precede it. On the Ribbon, click Fields. In the Add & Delete section, click More Fields and click Hyperlink To create a hyperlink-based column in the Design View, create a new column or click the name of a column under Field Name. In the Data Type, select Hyperlink. An Attachment   Introduction The OLE Object provides a convenient means of adding an external file to a record. One of the problems with it is that it can add only one object. Sometimes you want to associate many documents to one record and you may have a different number of objects for each different record. Fortunately, Microsoft Office Access 2007 solves this problem through an attachment. An attachment is a technique of associating one or more files to a record. Practical Learning: Introducing Attachment Fields From the resources that accompany these lessons, open the Altair Realtors2 database In the Navigation Pane, under Properties, right-click Properties : Table and click Design View Creating an Attachment Field To start with an attachment field, you must create a field whose data type is an attachment. You can work in the Datasheet View or in the Design View of a table. To create an attachment in the Datasheet View: Click Click to Add. In the list that appears, click Attachment To insert a column that would hold attachments, click a cell of the column that will precede it. On the Ribbon, click Fields. In the Add & Delete section, click More Fields and click Attachment If creating a table in Design View and if you are creating a new column, to configure it to hold one or more attachments, specify its Data Type as Attachment. If a field has already been created and the records have been added to the table, you cannot change the data type of a field to Attachment. You would receive an error when you try to save the table: In other words, you can specify the Attachment type only if you are creating a brand new field. After creating an attachment field on a table, you can configure it on a related form. In the Controls section of the Ribbon, the attachment is represented . Practical Learning: Creating an Attachment Field In the top section of the table, under Field Name, right-click Description and click Insert Rows Set the name to Pictures and the Data Type to Attachment Save and close the table In the Navigation Pane, under Properties: Table, right-click (the) Properties (form) and click Design View In the Controls section of the Ribbon, click Attachment and click the empty right side of the form Move the accompanying label above the newly added control and change its text to Picture(s) If the Property Sheet is not showing, right-click the newly added control and click Properties. In the Property Sheet, change the following characteristics: Name: atcPictures Record Source: Pictures Appropriately position and resize the attachment placeholder as you see fit Save the form and switch it to Form View Using an Attachment Microsoft made a tremendous job with the attachment feature of Microsoft Office Access 2007 also available in the 2010 version. In other words, it is extremely easy to attach a series of objects to a record. You can work either in the Datasheet View of a table or in the Form View of a form. Once the object is displaying, you can either double-click the field or right-click the field and click Manage Attachments. This would open the Attachments dialog box: In the Attachments dialog box, to create an attachment, you can click the Add button. This would open the Choose File dialog box. It behaves like the Open dialog box. When using it, select the file or object and click Open. The selected object would be added to the Attachments list view. In the same way, you can add the other objects one at a time. Alternatively, to add many objects, in the Choose File dialog box: To select objects one at a time: Click one of the objects to add Press and hold Ctrl Click each object to add, one object at a time After selecting the desired objects, release Ctrl Click Open To select objects in a range: Click one object at one end of the range Press and hold Shift Click the object at the other end of the range Release Shift Click Open To select objects in a range: Click somewhere on the left (or the right) or the top (or the bottom) side of an object at one end of the range and hold the mouse down Drag in the opposite direction to draw a fake rectangle that would touch or include the objects to be added When the objects have been included in the range, release the mouse Click Open To remove an item from the collection, click it in the Attachments list box and click Remove. Once you are ready with the list of attachments, click OK. After the attachments have been created, to access those of a record, navigate to that record. Then, right-click the placeholder of the attachment. A menu would come up. Among other menu items, the menu has a Forward and a Back options: If the record has only one attachment, both menu items would be disabled If the record has only two items, when you access the record, the Forward menu item would be enabled and the Back option would be disabled. You can click Forward to access the next object. At this time, the Forward menu item would be disabled and the Back option would be enabled. You can click Back to access the previous object If the record has more than two items, when you access the record, the Forward menu item would be enabled and the Back option would be disabled. You can click Forward to access the next object. You can keep clicking Forward to advance in the collection. You can click Back to access the previous object. From the second object to the one before the last, both the Forward and the Back menu items would be enabled. When you get to the last object of the collection, the Forward menu item would be disabled and the Back item would be enabled Practical Learning: Attaching  Objects to a Record For each record, right-click the placeholder under Picture(s) and click Manage Attachments... In the Attachments dialog box, click Add... From the resources that accompany these lessons, inside the Houses folder, locate a file whose 6 (first) characters are the same as the property number. If the file name does not end with a, such as 475974.bmp, click it: If the file name ends with a, such as 524880a.bmp, click it and click Open. Then click Add again and add additional files with the same 6 digits in the name and that ends with a letter such as b, c, etc After adding the picture(s), click OK Navigate to each record. Right-click the picture and review the pictures attached to each record Close the form Close Microsoft Access Exercises   Yugo National Bank Open the Yugo National Bank1 database Open AccountTypes table in Design View and change its columns as follows:   Field Name Data Type Field Size Caption AccountTypeID AutoNumber Account Type ID AccountType Text 50 Account Type Description Memo Save and close the table Open TransactionTypes table in Design View and change its columns as follows:   Field Name Data Type Field Size Caption TransactionTypeID AutoNumber Long Integer Transaction Type ID TransactionType Text 50 Transaction Type Description Memo     Save and close the table Open Customers table in Design View and change its columns as follows:   Field Name Data Type Field Size Caption CustomerID AutoNumber   Customer ID AccountNumber Text 20 Account Number CustomerName Text 50 Customer Name Address Text 60   City Text 50   State Text 50   ZIPCode Text 20 ZIP Code Country Text 50   HomePhone Text 40 Home Phone WorkPhone Text 40 Work Phone WorkExtension Text 20 Extension EmailAddress Hyperlink   Email Address Notes Memo     Save and close the table Create a form for the AccountTypes table. Save the form as AccountTypes and design it as you see fit before closing it. Here is an example: Create a form for the TransactionTypes table. Save the form as TransactionTypes and design it as you see fit before closing it. Here is an example: Create a form for the Customers table. Save the form as Customers and design it as you see fit before closing it. Here is an example: Watts A loan Open the Watts A Loan1 database Open the Employees table in Design View and change its columns as follows:   Field Name Data Type Field Size Caption EmployeeID AutoNumber   Employee ID FirstName Text 50 First Name LastName Text 50 Last Name Title Text 80   WorkPhone Text 40 Work Phone Address Text 100   City Text 50   State Text 50   ZIPCode Text 20 ZIP Code Country Text 50   HomePhone Text 40 Home Phone Notes Memo     Save and close the table World Statistics Open the World Statistics1 database Open the Countries table in to Design  and change it as follows:   Field Name Data Type Field Size Caption CountryID AutoNumber   Country ID CommonName Text 50 Common Name InternetCode Text 10 Internet Code LongName Text   Long Name GovernmentType Text 60 Government Type WebSite Hyperlink   More Information Save and close the table US Senate Open the US Senate1 database  Open the Senators table in Design View  and change it as follows:   Field Name Data Type Field Size Caption SenatorID AutoNumber   Senator ID SenatorName Text 50 Senator Name SeatingStatus Text 50 Seating Status Gender Text 40 Last Name State Text 2   Race Text 40   Religion Text 50   Use the Lookup Wizard on the State to create a list of the US states using the abbreviation for each Use the Lookup Wizard on the Race column to create a list of the races. The options will be Black, White, Native American, Hispanic, Asian, Other Use the Lookup Wizard on the Religion to create a list of the religions. The options will be Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Baptist, Presbyterian, Atheist, Other Save and close the table