How To Create a Microsoft Access Switchboard Using the Switchboard Manager

in this lecture I want to show you probably one of the easiest ways to create a switchboard so a switchboard is a form that you can use so that users who come into your Access database can easily navigate to basically what they need so instead of users having to go to the navigation pane to search for tables or forms they commonly use they can have a form pop-up when access opens up and you can have buttons on that form that will take them to where they need to go probably one of the easiest ways to do this is to use the switchboard manager and that's what I'll show you how to create in this video so the first thing that we need to do is to bring up the command button that's going to allow us to create switchboards and that's not found right now on any of the tabs in the ribbon we actually have to add it to the quick access toolbar so what I'm going to do is click on the drop down for my quick access toolbar I'm going to go to more commands down at the bottom on the left hand side here these are just the most popular commands I want to switch this to all commands and then we're looking for switchboard manager now I could scroll Scroll scroll until I find the esses or I can click on any one of these it the s on my keyboard scroll down a little bit more now I'm in the S section until I find switchboard manager click on that add it over and then click on OK alright so there it is and if it's the first time you're creating a switchboard you'll get this dialog box that pops up saying that the switchboard manager was unable to find a valid switchboard do you want to create one just go ahead and say yes and there's my switchboard manager so right now I have one the main switchboard by default and I want to add in at least four buttons to it one that's going to take me to the customer details form another to the order details form and then one that'll take me to the report on monthly sales and lastly a button that's going to close access all together so what I want to do is with it select it I want to go ahead and hit edit so now I need to add in those buttons so I'll click on new is for a new button and I need to give it a name and for this one I want the customer details form to open up but I want to open up an ad view meaning that a person can come in and when they click on it they'll just be able to add in a new customer right away so the text here what I'm going to call it is enter new customer and the command will be to open a form in add mode and that form again is going to be customer details okay and that's it that easy to create a button all right let me create a couple more the next one is going to open up the order details form in edit mode so again I'll click on new and I'll call this one orders the command here will be to open a form in edit mode and the form will be order details okay one more I'll go ahead and click on new and I want to open up my monthly sales report so I will call this one monthly sales and again the command here will be to open a report and that report will be monthly sales report okay all right and I also mentioned that I want a little button that will close access all together so one more time I'll click on new and I'll just call this one close access and the command here will be to exit the application okay now I want to make sure yep it's the very last button that I have there so let's test this out to see how it looks I'll go ahead and close this and close my switchboard and open up my navigation pane and what I'm looking for is my switchboard form I'll double click on that and you can see how it looks it's not the prettiest thing in the world but it does work so if I click on enter new customer there's my customer details form and again it's an ADD mode so I can just go in and add in a new customer orders shows you my order details form monthly sales opens up the dialog box for the monthly sales report and then close access of course would close access well I want to show you also how to do one more thing because you can create a switchboard that connects to other switchboard so this one here mostly deals with customers and orders right well I'm also going to set up another switchboard that deals with employee information and what I'll do here in the main switchboard is I'll add a button that goes to that employees switchboard alright so to do that I'll go ahead and close the switchboard I'll click on my switchboard manager I am this time I'm going to create a new switchboard and I will call this employee info okay I'm going to make sure it's highlighted go to edit I will add in a new button this one is going to go to my employees form so I will call this employees and my command here will be to go to a form in edit mode and that form will be employee details I'll click on OK and you get the gist right you would just go in click on new and then tell access what form report or table you want it to open all right let me cancel that so in my employee info I'm going to go to my employee details table let me go ahead and close this because the next thing that I need to do is to go back to the main switchboard and edit that to add in a command for this switchboard to connect to the employee switchboard so I'll click on new I will call this one employee info switchboard the command here is go to a switchboard and that switchboard is the employee info switchboard perfect I'll click on ok and I'll go ahead and close this and close this and again when I open up my switchboard there it is employee info switchboard so when I click on that it goes right to that other switchboard let me click on employees and you see here it opened up my employee details form so it's perfect everything is working right now the only other thing that I need to do is to make sure that this switchboard open when I open up the database so let me go to file and options go to current database and the display form here I'm going to change from done and I'll scroll down a bit it's all the way at the bottom I'm going to choose switchboard all right I'll click on OK and I have to reopen it first take effect I'll click on OK close this database and then when I go to open it there's my switchboard so it worked out perfect so the keys here you guys when you want to create a new switchboard if you have to make sure you have access to a switchboard manager and again you can add that to your quick access toolbar and then once you have it you would just go in choose a switchboard or add a new switchboard click on edit and then click on new to tell it which buttons you want to associate with which forms reports or tables and then once that's done go to your access options inside the current database and tell it to look for that switchboard

Channel: Software Success

Views: 35,721

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Keywords: Creating a Switchboard Using the Switchboard Manager, Access Switchboard, Switchboard Manager, switchboard, access switchboard manager, switchboard manager in microsoft access 2010, switchboard access 2010, microsoft access, microsoft access software, microsoft office (software), microsoft access switchboard tutorial, access main menu, switchboard access 2013, switchboard access 2016, How To Create a Switchboard Using the Switchboard Manager, How to Use Access, Microsoft Office

Id: pwbujEakjoM

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 28 2017