Continuous Forms in Microsoft Access. Product Inventory List Form. Click to Open Specific Product.

welcome to another tech help video brought to you by accesslearningzone.com my name is richard ross your instructor in this video i'm going to teach you about continuous forms otherwise known as list forms where you can show a list of records at one time and then i'm going to show you how to make a button so you can click on it and open up the specific record that you're looking for today's question comes from wyatt one of my gold members from anchorage alaska wyatt asks how can i display all of my products in a list so that i can scroll up and down through them i'd also like to be able to click on one to open up that product's form a total count of products and my total inventory value would also be nice to see too thanks well wyatt we can do this using what's called a continuous form in microsoft access that's where you can see a bunch of records on the screen at one time as opposed to a single form where you only see one record at a time i'm going to break your question up into two parts in part one i'm going to show you how to create that continuous form and how to click on one of them and click on a button to open up that product's form then in part two which i'll do in the extended cut i'll show you how to do the count of products and the total inventory value let's start with part one okay here i have a blank access database we're gonna need a table to start with so let's create a table create table design and let's make a product table so real simple product id an auto number the product name which will be a short text field if you want a full description a long text field that's fine too i'm not going to add one for this video but you can add all kinds of fields whatever you want i'll put a quantity on hand that'll be a number of type long integer that's why i can keep track of how many i've got now you said inventory value in your question so i'm not sure if you want your cost or what you're selling the products for you can do both if you want to i'll just pick one i'll put the unit price in here and that'll be a currency value and that'll be what i'm selling it for so what you'll have is you'll be calculating the total retail value of your entire inventory if you want to do unit cost as well you can add that too so let's save this this will be my product t product table primary key yes to find that please that'll be the auto number i've got whole videos on auto numbers and why you should use them let's close this down open it back up again put a few products in here all right let's put in my star trek t-shirt and i've got 20 of those on hand at 25 a piece i've got the deep space 9 mugs i've got 15 of those on hand and they're selling for 15 i've got the chewbacca hoodie and i've got five of those on hand and they're 45 bucks because they're big and you know they're they're woolly and fluffy and stuff okay so i got my basic products in the database now this is kind of what you want to see when you make your continuous form but you don't want to work directly with your tables it's always a bad idea especially if you're going to have other people working with this database too you should try to keep all of your user interaction with forms so let's close this save changes yes let's create a basic product single form first so create form design i i don't like using form where it slaps a form together for you i don't like this i it just doesn't look nice i don't like all the formatting now i've got other videos available to show you how to do basic single forms i'll put some links down below in the description below the video so if you're not sure about basic form design watch those first then come back to this one so i'm going to move through this one kind of quickly so create form design all right here's my basic form first thing i do is i have to give a little splash of color i don't like to have those white backgrounds all right i like to set up the record source first so go to all drop this down product t is the only thing in there all right this will be a single form so one record at a time on the screen now once i've set up that shrink this up a little bit we don't need to make that that big that's about good right there okay now i can go to design i can add existing fields here's my fields click on the first one hold the shift key down click on the last one click and drag boom and there we go all right there are my fields you can change the labels if you want to you can adjust these product names should probably be a little bigger okay i like to gray out my id fields that way the user just doesn't the user understands they can't edit that okay save this as my product f close it and now open it up and there you go it's a real simple product form and you have to scroll through the records using the navigation buttons right here now let's turn this into a continuous form all right if you already have a good form set up all you have to do at this point is copy it and make a few modifications all right watch this copy ctrl c paste control v i'm going to call this my product list f all right open it up in design view now we're going to open up the form properties again change this to continuous forms all right now we'll see multiple records on the same screen at the same time now if i save this now and close it and reopen it it looks like this okay and you can scroll up and down through that but that's not quite exactly what i want i want it to look more like a spreadsheet all right so we have to just do a little bit of layout changing in here so design view the first thing i'm going to do is turn on the form header and footer that way i can have a header across the top and a footer at the bottom so right click anywhere here in the details section and go to form header footer not page header footer all right that's for printing stuff out and we don't print out forms we print out reports so i never use that go to form header and footer that puts on these things see i have a section here and a section down there now the form header appears once at the top of the form so i'm going to take these labels select all the labels cut them out ctrl x cut and paste them up here in the form header all right now i'm going to just rearrange these a little bit so they look like the way i want them to look like that all right maybe select all of them get them right on the grid like they should be you could change the color if you want make them black so they're easier to see okay bring this up like that because that section doesn't have to be that big you could change this background color separately if you want to like you can go you know with a dark background color like that and then select all of those labels and give them like a white foreground color if you want to all right whatever you want it's your database that's why you're learning access do whatever you want right now slide these fields up underneath the ones above right slide them right up underneath their labels so get that right there get you right there all right resize you a little bit put the quantity on hand there and the unit price right there all right line them up make them look nice now i like to have everything left aligned so i'm going to select all these fields and hit the left align button i don't like labels on the left and then the numbers on the right and it just looks messy okay now grab this bar right here and slide it up to get rid of all that empty space we're going to save it ctrl s close it and then reopen it again and look at that there's your continuous form now one other little thing i like to make the change is right here i don't like that alternating background color back in design view i hate that and in my template my basic template i turn that off all right so open up the properties for the detail section double click right there see there there's back color and alternate back color now i don't like using theme colors accent five lighter sixty you're supposed to be able to change your theme and all your colors change i don't like that so i'm gonna go first let's start with the back color come in here dot dot dot pick a standard color that i like like maybe that guy and then i'm going to copy and paste this over the alternate back color as well so i got the same color if you want to change the form footer and put the same color there you can do that too we'll leave the form header dark like that it looks nice save it close it reopen it there we go looks good there's a little bit of space here for a scroll bar because if this is smaller or if you have more records see that scroll bar appears you can scroll up and down but if you don't need it it doesn't show up now next i promised i would show you how to click on one of these guys and then open up this one right this pro full product form because usually you'll have a lot more fields on here okay you might have your unit cost your full description maybe a picture all kinds of manufacturer where you get it from but you don't want all that stuff showing up on this simple list form this is to find something quickly okay so what you might want to do is pick one of these and then we're going to make a button right here that'll open up that product form okay so design view fortunately there is a button in the command button set that does this for us automatically so go up to design find your command buttons right there drop it on the form footer go to form operations open a form next what am i opening the product list form next now do i want to show all the records or find specific data to display click on that one next link the two fields that are the same in both forms product id product id click that button to link them next what do you want the button to say i'll put in here open product you can put a picture if you want but i like text next give the button a meaningful name open product form no spaces preferably and then finish and there's my button right down there i do have another video that covers that button in a lot more detail okay so i'll put a link down below if you want to watch that too and as a side note there is no command button option to do the same thing with reports if you want to print out a product or you want to print out a single invoice for example or a single customer record there's no button up here to do it i've got a separate video on that as well lots of people like that one so i'll put a link to that too okay so let's close this down open it back up open the product list now it's a two-step process click on chewbacca hoodie and then open product it'll open this the currently selected product there it is i'm going to slide this over here and hit ctrl s to save its position all right close that click on deep space nine mugs open product see that opens right to it pick the product open product yes in my more advanced classes you can make it so you can double click on one of these up here and it just opens this form that requires some programming it's not quite as easy and i do have classes that cover that so wyatt there you go that shows you how to create a continuous form to show all of your products click on a specific product and then hit the open product button to open up that product's single form now in part two in the extended cut i will show you how to calculate a total count of products and your total inventory value if you want to learn more about continuous forms in the extended cut i show you how to calculate a line total which is right over here right that's quantity on hand times unit price to get a total for each product then the inventory count is right down here that's a count of all of these guys all right the count up 20 15 50. so i want to sum those together then over here the total inventory value sum up these guys all right and these are what are called form footer totals and that's all covered in the extended cut for members silver members and up get access to all of my extended cut videos you

Channel: Computer Learning Zone

Views: 17,890

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Keywords: microsoft access, ms access, #msaccess, #microsoftaccess, continuous forms, form header footer, what is a continuous form, columnar form, how to create continuous form, creating continuous forms, open specific record, find specific data to display

Id: EJWNnSw0FhA

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020