Table Design View

A table can be created and customized in Table Design View where the Field Names, Data Types, Descriptions, and Field Properties are defined. After selecting the Table tab and New in the Database Objective window, you will be presented with a New Table dialog box where you selected Design view.

1. Field name - type the name of your field into your table.  The name should give information about what the field contains.  For example, if the field contains the street address of several people, then the field name should be "Street Address".  If it will contain  telephone numbers, then the field name should be "Telephone Numbers" or "Tel".  Just be sure that the name is clear.
   
   
2. After you enter the field name, tab to the data type.  There should be a little grey and black drop down arrow next to this area.  Click on it and select the type of information that will be entered here (text, numbers, date, etc).  You will probably use "text" for the type of information for most of your fields (even for zip codes and telephone numbers).  The "number" type of information is mostly for numbers that will be used in calculations.  Find the dialog box at the bottom of the screen.  In the space that says "field size", type in the limit to the number of characters that may be entered in this area.  For example, if the data type is "date" then you don't want the user to enter 50 characters.  Look at this date:  10/30/1944 that is ten characters long.  Specify that you only want the user to be able to enter ten characters.  This helps the user know when he has entered too much and cuts down on errors.
   
   
3. Tab to the description area.  The description area helps you and the user know what to type.  The computer knows what to expect because it has that information in "data type".  Now the user needs to know what to type.  If the data type is "date" then type "date" under the description.  You may also want to specify whether the year is four digits or the last two digits.  Suppose the information to be entered is "state".  In the description, you need to specify whether you want the state abbreviation or the full name.
   
   
4. Keep repeating these steps until you have typed and described all the field names that you desire.

 
After you have set up your fields, go to datasheet view.  Click on the view icon in the upper left corner of the screen.  the icon will look like a form (or a sheet of paper) with lines across it.  Access will ask you if you want to set up a key number.  It is not necessary to do this, but you may want to say yes so that you can relate this table to other tables in the future.