Microsoft Access Switchboards and Navigation Forms. Why NOT To Use Them! Create Your Own Menu Forms

welcome to another tech help video brought to you by accesslearningzone.com i am your instructor richard ross in today's video i'm going to teach you how to build switch forms navigation forms and custom menu forms in your microsoft access databases today's question comes from charlotte in auckland new zealand one of my platinum members charlotte says what is the best way to create an interface for my users to navigate the different forms and reports in my database switchboard navigation forms or something else well charlotte i've personally always been preferential to the something else i like to build my own custom menu forms i'm going to show you how to do that a little bit later on but first let me show you the switchboard and the navigation forms now like i had here on the opening slide in old versions of access we had this thing called a switchboard which looks like that then later on i believe around access 2010 they came out with navigation forms and those are okay for beginner users but i like making custom menu forms myself i think these are the most flexible you can control exactly the way they look and when you get into programming and more advanced stuff you have a lot more control over them so i'm going to show you all three in this video now before we get started i'd like you to go watch my blank database template video i have a blank template that i use for all my tech help videos and this video shows you how i built that template you can also download a free copy off my website there's the address i'll put a link down below in the description you can click on but in that video i show you the basics of how i like to set up my databases for example i don't like to use the tabbed interface i like to use overlapping windows and i will actually show you how to make a real simple main menu with a custom menu form in that video so go watch that first then come back here and i'll teach you about switchboards navigation forms and we'll do something extra with the main menu form so go watch that first and come on back okay so here i am in the tech help free template i've added a few things since you watched the initial blank video but it's basically the same stuff here's the customer list you can either click on open customer down here or you can double click here where it's blue that'll open up the same way we've got an order form here you can find this in my invoicing template and again that's a free video i'll put a link down below all right we got our contacts over here these are all just buttons that open up other forms all right the customer form customers with contacts that's a sub form and as you can see i've got my own custom menuing system here now that's how i like to build it what if you want to go a little simpler what if you want to just use the built-in navigation that comes with access what do you do well there's two things you can do you can either use the switchboard manager or a navigation form now the switchboard manager goes way back access 2000 or 2003 i think is when it first came out and the switchboard manager lets you simply pick what forms you want to appear on a menu and you can have multiple levels of nested menus if you want to now the switchboard manager used to be under database tools but it's not here anymore they actually hit it i think in access 2010. so in order to get to it you have to add it to your quick access toolbar up here which i already did and you can find that by dropping this down going to more commands go up to all commands right here and then scroll down until you find the switchboard manager wherever you are down here somewhere right there right add it over here and you'll see it's on my quick access toolbar already okay so now once you got that you can click on this button and it'll say the switchboard manager was unable to find a valid switchboard in this database would you like to create one well yeah sure that's why i clicked on you so yes all right this guy pops up so these switchboard pages are basically a separate menu you can have multiple pages in the switchboard all right so let's say the first switchboard is just your customer form and your contact form all right so here we're going to go edit to edit the main switchboard okay the main switchboard right here items on this switchboard let's add the customer form so go new what text you want to have in there how about customers and then you pick a command now the commands are open form and add mode which means it's opening that form and putting on a blank new record okay edit mode which means you can browse through all of them there's open a report design application means you're actually in this interface to edit the switchboard okay exit application closes access and you can run code or run a macro so we're going to open a form in edit mode let's say what form do you want customer f hit ok and there you go now on the main switchboard you got the customers all right let's close this and see what we got so far close close and now you're going to find a switchboard items table which nobody told the guys over at microsoft that they didn't follow my naming conventions because i say no spaces in your table names and they put a space in there all right and you'll also find a switchboard form down here now the switchboard form if you open it up looks like that that's pretty bland all right now i mean i'm no graphic artist myself but i think mine looks a little better all right that right there is a little button you click on it and there's your customer menu okay not that's not that difficult you just want to go back in there and make some changes right all right here's the main switchboard you could double click on it to edit it add a new button all right let's put the contacts on there and yes i realized that my for i'm just putting any old form on here okay you'd want to obviously have things that are you know related to each other on the same page all right open that guy up let's open up the contact form all right we can add another one invoices or orders let's call it orders all right we can make this one open up in add mode right how about add order instead like that all right whatever you want to have in here there's the order f all right close it close it and then open it up okay it's not bad and you can come in here and customize this look and feel a little bit right click design view right you can make this bigger you can change the colors you can delete that background if you want to and there's all kinds of stuff you can do in here you can change this is just a picture over here right you can move these things around change the fonts all that stuff i'm going to close this and not save changes but you get the point there's a switchboard items table too members in the extended cut video i'll take you through this a little bit more on what this means but basically beginner users you don't want to modify this by hand leave this alone use the switchboard manager want to add a second page right go back into here all right add a new page let's call this the managers page or manager menu let's call it manager menu okay and on the manager menu you'll double click on this one all right now you'll put things on here that only the manager can do so new maybe like edit orders for example okay and you can go to edit and order f okay and then i'll close that close that oh wait now we have to put that page see it's a little confusing now we have to put that a link to that page on the main menu so now on the main switchboard add a new item all right and we'll call this manager menu and then we'll go to um go to switchboard and then the manager menu and then hit ok all right you can move things up and move them down like move them up and down in the order here if you want that on top or on the bottom and then close close now when you open this there you go there's your manager menu click and it opens up the manager menu and it just replaces the existing menu okay and you can have another button on here to go back to the other one if you want to and then if you want to use this as your startup form you just go into the access options like i showed you in the blank database template and set that as your startup form so that's the switchboard manager that's okay it's real simple it's real basic it gets the job done again these are good for beginner users they're not bad they really have limitations though when you start getting into advanced design if you want to become a developer all right my method gives you complete control over everything if you use a switchboard or the navigation forms which i'm going to show you in a moment um i i find them harder to work with from a programming point of view than just building my own menu form from scratch i like to be able to get under the hood and do exactly what i want make it look exactly the way i want to make it look whereas with these you're a little more limited let's take a look at navigation forms around access 2010 i think they introduced something different called the navigation form which is why the switchboard manager is hidden it's still in there you can still use it obviously but it's it's old school some people still like it though i still have clients send me databases every now and then that had switchboards in them and surprisingly on my website switchboard is still a very popular search term people are looking for it so that's why i put this video together people still want to learn how to use it so the navigation forms go under create and then in the form section you'll see navigation right here now navigation forms it gives you a bunch of different ways to how do you want to control the interface i personally like vertical tabs left that looks like this okay now basically what you got here is a form with a navigation control in it all right these are up here in the toolbox you can add the manually if you want to and then a subform over here now the way this works is you pick something over here and it opens the form as a subform inside of the navigation form now the main reason i don't like this is because it as far as naming your forms go if you want to have a query that refers to the customer form now you got to treat it as a subform on the navigation form it just turns into a pain i really don't like it i'm gonna show you how to use it but i personally don't like these it's just my my opinion all right so to add something here you just grab it like customer form you click and drag it right on that add new see that boom customer form all right contact form click drag boom drop it there all right all right when i click on these here you can see them when i want to move them around click drag drop boom just like that all right i want to put something else put the main menu on there doesn't matter okay now when you save it and all right navigation forms fine we're not keeping it close it open it up and there you go customer form contact form main menu form say yeah that's okay i just don't like it because again from an advanced database standpoint if you make a query or another form it's going to refer to these values now it's got to be forms navigation form subform name you know dot form explanation point customer it just becomes a it's a pain it's a nightmare um you could do a double level navigation form too that's kind of cool so go to create navigate oh my head form wizard by accident i want that navigation you could do horizontal tabs two levels or you can do horizontal and vertical that gets really confusing i think though the horizontal tabs two levels is neat all right get rid of this so you can do with the two levels you do like groups across the top and then you do the forms at the bottom here so across the top let's say here let's call this uh customer stuff all right and make it a little bit wider and then over here we'll make this manager stuff okay now you put your stuff down below so the customer stuff click boom be careful when you drop it too you got to grab it and click it and drop it right there don't drop it there all right drop it right there okay and then maybe i don't know uh this guy click drag drop it there all right now go over to the manager stuff and you could put like order f there see or detail up maybe next to it whatever okay now when you save this sure close it open it up now you got two levels here see you got the customer stuff with this stuff then you got the manager stuff with these things under here see i don't know it's kind of neat it's okay again it's just the naming conventions and stuff get all messed up but the reason why they added this is because now it makes it easy for beginner users for novices to be able to make a way to navigate around the database but i think this is nice and simple as it is just put command buttons on a form right for some reason they they try to hide the fact that designing forms in design view is nice and easy it's not that hard it takes what half an hour of training all right i cover a lot of how to do this in my access beginner one class it's easy to do i think the one major difference between access and excel is that with excel it's very easy for someone to sit down just start plugging numbers in maybe draw some you know different controls text boxes and circles whatever and you can just be productive and get up and running without knowing much right obviously it helps if you learn some functions like sum and average but that's real simple whereas with access you'll get a lot more out of it if you take the time up front to learn how it works just a couple hours of training to understand the basics of tables and relationships and form design once you get a little bit of training under your belt access becomes a whole lot more powerful it's not something you can just easily sit down and just start plugging away at the like excel or word and of course another problem with using these built-in navigation forms is once you get into developer level stuff again this becomes notoriously difficult to code for okay i mean it's like as you can see it's easy to set up a nice little interface here but um i don't particularly care for it that's just my opinion if you like it great use it so this finally brings you to a custom main menu like i developed in the blank video now mine's really simple it's blank form turn off the scroll bars turn off the navigation buttons the record selectors right we covered all this in the blank video drop command buttons on here to open up your customer list and all the other things right customer form all right pretty straightforward um i promised you that i'd show you a cool trick that i haven't showed you before with something you can do in the main menu and i will in just a moment but first let's go over not an advertisement just yet i'm not going to stick with an advertisement like i do let me go over a couple of other free tech help videos that i have that add to enhancing your main menu i've done a lot of different stuff that you can do to change your main menu form alright first there's the report list box video where i show you how to make a list box that has a list of your reports in it so you could put those on the main menu instead of having to have different buttons for each report you just simply put these in a table and then you have one list box on your main menu and you just pick the the report you want click print report so if you've got 15 20 different reports you don't have to have 15 20 different buttons you just put them on a list and i will put links to all these other videos down below in the links section then there's my dashboard form where i show you how to make a dashboard out of your main menu so you've got a sales summary here for example right the days the weeks the month sales a little chart here okay that's how to make a dashboard out of your menu so there's so much more you can do with custom menus than the navigation form and the switchboard easily lend themselves to this is kind of related this is making a splash screen like this thing here that pops up when you start the database before the database actually loads i just want to throw that in because it's kind of neat this is one of my favorite ones i use it all the time my database my favorite customers list again another list box with your favorite customers your most recently viewed customers okay and the most viewed customers and you can switch between those and it'll show you like your top 10 most viewed customers the ones you viewed recently all right that's pretty cool that's something to put on your main menu i've got a video titled form design aesthetics where i teach you how to make cool looking futuristic forms like this for your main menu or any other kind of form then when you're all done building your menu so it looks good all right and you're happy with it watch my simple security video i'll teach you security that's good enough for most trusted work environments all right you're not dealing with hackers and this is an fbi level security but it's good enough to keep the average people out we hide sensitive objects we hide the navigation pane we disable the full ribbon that kind of stuff and for members i'll show you how to password protect stuff it's pretty cool okay so that's just some stuff you can do to enhance your main menu and again more reasons why you want to build menus like the way i do now it's time for your special feature hidden trick i didn't mention this in any of the text so this is pretty cool i show this in some of my beginner lessons but a lot of people don't know this trick now many of you like me your keyboard warriors i hate to stop and have to grab the mouse so wouldn't it be cool if we could navigate through the forms in our database using just keyboard now we could tab through right if you're on here you can tab tab you can kind of barely see you know which things are were focused but it'd be nice if you can make keyboard shortcuts for these buttons so design view alright customer list let's make the l a keyboard shortcut so i'm going to put a little ampersand where are you ampersand right in front of that l see that all right now it looks like that customer list little underscore under there all right customer form let's make that a c and the customer with context i don't know let's use the w like that okay now save it close it open it back up again right there okay now to use those buttons press the alt key and then that key so l right alt l boom there's my customer list see that now you could make another custom close button over here and make like alt x or whatever the clothes or just for just a little training control f4 will shut a form alt f4 shuts down an application so alt f4 will shut down all of access control f4 will shut down that form so alt c boom and now you're in here and you can tab around right do the same thing with these guys right come in here all right we can make orders alt o we can make contacts in here alt c if you want to add a close button here let me show you let's put it it's usually in the upper right corner right so let's grab a command button drop it up here we're going to go for operations close form next and then we need text so we can use that let's make the text um let's do e no not exit i'm going to do close and then we'll do all an ampersand x like that so it looks like this okay next and then what name you want to give it close form and there we go so there's our close like that okay put it right well that's that's too far right about there come on come here all right or you could probably just put the x by itself but that's okay you get the point right so now alt c and then alt x if you're a keyboard freak right alt w whoops now i hit the alt by itself this i cover in some of my other lessons you can actually use just the alt key by itself to navigate through all of the menus up top too so if i hit just adjust alt don't press alt c just hit alt and let it go it goes up to the ribbon right and now c for create and then you know t n or p for parts or f d for form design okay so it's designed for people who just want to use the keyboard or people with disabilities and guess what i've got i've got a video for how to do that too the quick tip shortcut keys to navigate the ribbon i got videos for everything people alright so there's your super duper shortcut right that's pretty cool huh if you want to learn more in the extended cut i show a cool menuing trick that i use in a lot of my databases that's how to make another form open up just to the right of the form that calls it so for example from your main menu you can click your customer form button and the customer form will automatically always open up to the right of the main menu form no matter where the main menu form happens to be so if you move it down it'll move down with it for example alright that's all covered in the extended cut silver members and up get access to all of my extended cut videos how do you become a member click the join button below the video after you click the join button you'll see a list of all the different types of membership levels that are available silver members and up will get access to all of the extended cut tech help videos live video and chat sessions and more gold members get access to a download folder containing all the sample databases that i build in my tech help videos plus my code vault where i keep tons of different functions that i use platinum members get all the previous perks plus access to my full beginner courses and some of my expert courses these are the full-length courses found on my website and not just for access i also teach word excel visual basic asp and lots more but don't worry these free tech help videos are going to keep coming as long as you keep watching them i'll keep making more if you like this 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Channel: Computer Learning Zone

Views: 4,374

Rating: 4.9120879 out of 5

Keywords: microsoft access, ms access, #msaccess, #microsoftaccess, #help, #howto, #tutorial, #instruction, #learn, #lesson, #training, #database, microsoft access switchboard, create and use a switchboard, What is a switchboard in Access, How do you create a switchboard in Access, alt key command button, movesize, openformright, open form right, form position, Where is the switchboard in Access, Where's the Switchboard Manager Tool, navigation form, How do you create a navigation form in Access

Id: byR1fza435g

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021