Entering Data, Part 2

Lesson 7: Edit Records, Columns, and Layouts

S M L XL FS | Slo Reg Fast 2x | Bookmark

In Lesson 7, we are continuing with entering data in Microsoft Access. We will walk through adding more records to the table, discuss record selectors, deleting records, and how Access handles auto number IDs. I will show you how to download a sample database from my website to save time on data entry. We will also cover turning off the delete confirmation warning, backing up your data, saving layout changes, resizing and moving columns, and why it is important not to force users to enter unnecessary information. This lesson focuses on entering data efficiently and managing your table layout.

Navigation

Prev: Lesson 06
Next: Lesson 08

Keywords

Access Beginner, entering data, sample database, download database, record selectors, delete confirmation warning, saving layout changes, resizing columns, moving columns, required property, validation rule, backing up data, auto number, deleting records,

Subscribe to Entering Data, Part 2
Get notifications when this page is updated

Intro

In lesson seven, we are continuing with entering data in Microsoft Access. We will walk through adding more records to the table, discuss record selectors, deleting records, and how Access handles auto number IDs. I will show you how to download a sample database from my website to save time on data entry. We will also cover turning off the delete confirmation warning, backing up your data, saving layout changes, resizing and moving columns, and why it is important not to force users to enter unnecessary information. This lesson focuses on entering data efficiently and managing your table layout.

Transcript

In lesson seven, we are continuing with entering data. We are going to enter some more records into our table. I will show you how to download a sample database from my website, so you do not have to type in all those records if you do not want to. We will talk about the record selectors, how to turn off the delete confirmation warning, saving layout changes, resizing our columns, and moving columns around.

I am now ready to type in my second customer. Let's go with Joe, Tab, Smith, Tab. Notice the customer ID has already been set by Access. It's set to customer two. Remember those will automatically count up and you do not have to worry about what they are. That number is completely meaningless to you. That is just for Access to use internally.

Joe is at XYZ Corp, 101 Main Street. Buffalo, New York, 14220. Tab past the country since he is in the US. I do not have his website or his email address and that brings up a good point.

I have always been of the mindset that no data is better than bad data. Do not force your users to have to type something in, for example, zip code or a phone number, or even a last name if they do not have it. Unless that is absolutely critical for your business, do not force the user to type it in and I will show you how to do that very soon. There is something called the required property we can force the user to have to put a value in. We will get to that in the Access Beginner Four.

But I very seldom force users to have to type in information. Sometimes it is necessary. Sometimes you want to make sure you have got a specific bit of information. But if you do not have that information as a user, you are likely to just type in any old thing, like a phone number like 555222. It is better to have that field blank than to have something in that is wrong. It is easier to go through later and say, okay, which customers do I not have phone numbers for? I then try to contact them by email or mail and get the phone number. But if it has got a junk phone number in there because you required them to type that in, that is much harder to find those. So just keep that in mind as we are building our database.

Moving on, phone number 7165553333. Number of employees, let us say 500 tab. Discount rate. Again, remember, you can type it in as 10 like that or you can type it in as .1. Either one works. Customer since, let us say 1190. And while I am at it, let me fix my customer since that I know I put in 1130 in the last lesson just to show you the cut-off dates. But the company was not even around in 1930. That brings up another point.

I am going to teach you about something called a validation rule. That is coming up in Access Beginner 3. That is where you can say, okay, the value has to be greater than this and less than that. For example, greater than, let us say 112000 if the company was created in 2000. But less than today's date. You can do that with a validation rule. Again, I will put links to these things down below in the links section. If you want to learn about them now, you can go ahead and click on it because these lessons are already made. You just have to get there. So I will type in 112002 for me.

Now, I am going to use the down arrow to go back down to that record. And then the right arrow, just like a spreadsheet, you can use the arrow keys to move around if you want to. Just like Excel.

Credit limit of $500 tab is active. I can press with the space bar tab. And then any notes you want to put in there. Bill him net 30. And then tab. That will bring us down to row 3 for the next customer. Notice the pencil is gone from the left hand side over here. So that means this record has been saved in the table. The Joe Smith record has been saved.

As you can see, once you have got the table properly defined, you have got it built, you have got the fields all set up and defined, it is easy to enter data into the table.

Now, like I have said before, we do not want our end users, the other people that are going to be using our database, to interface directly with the tables. But me as a developer, I like to put some sample records in a table when I am done building it. This lets me see what the table is going to look like, how the data is going to work, make sure everything is working okay. Even if it is just bogus data, it gives me an opportunity to see the table in action.

Remember, your end users will be working only with forms. You do not want them poking around inside your tables. We will get to building forms a little bit later today.

But it is easier for us as the developers to be able to build those queries and forms and reports and see some sample data in there. It is easier, for example, some of the wizards, it will show you the sample data in the field. You can say, okay, this column has to be that wide. This field needs to be this wide and so on.

Now, for the purposes of class, I would like to have a bunch of different customer records in here for us to play with. We are going to be building some queries in a few minutes. The whole point of queries is to display the data in different ways. We have to have a bunch of different data, a bunch of different records in there to see how the queries work.

Now, if you just want to type in your own sample data, that is fine. Put a couple of people in there from different states. Mix up the data a little bit.

Now, if you do not like typing and who really does, you can go to my website right there. There is the link and you can grab a copy of the database as it is with all the data in it. I am going to type in a bunch of data right now. I am not going to make you sit here and watch me type it all in. That would be boring. But feel free to go to my website and download my database.

Here is the database page. This is where the link is going to take you. This is what the page looks like right now. It still says in progress right now because it is not finished yet. I am still recording it. That is what I am doing right now.

But come down here where it says full course lessons page. Click on that. Scroll down. You will see I am still in the middle of lesson seven right there. It says databases built in class. Go ahead and click on that. That will save the file to your downloads folder.

Now depending on the browser that you have, this may be a little bit different. This browser here is Microsoft Edge. You can open the file directly if you want to by clicking on open file. But you cannot run the database out of here because it is still inside of a zip file. If you do not understand what zip files are, I have got a whole lesson on just working with zip files. It is on my website. I will put a link down below. But basically all you have to do is copy this file to your desktop or somewhere else that you save your databases so you can open it up. So I will just take this file, click and drag and drop it on my desktop.

There it is. And now I have got my PC resale, middle of lesson seven dot ACC DB. Now I can close the zip file. And let us open this guy up. Now, you will get the security warning. It says some active content has been disabled. This is to keep you safe and to prevent you from getting a file that might have some malicious code in it. Yes, it is possible for viruses to be transmitted through office documents. It is not required to Excel, Access, all those things. So Microsoft disables it for unknown databases.

I am going to click on enable content. That marks this database as safe. You can tell it is safe too because there is only a table in it. You cannot hide any kind of viruses or whatever in tables. There has to be a form in here or a module or something like that with some code in it.

But if you are going to be learning from me, you are probably going to want to download the databases that I build and trust me. If you get it off of my site, if you download it directly from 599city.com, I guarantee it is safe. I have been doing this since 2002, zero viruses. 40,000 plus customers. And you will find the customer tables right there and there are all of our records. We have got everybody from Ellen Watson to James Kirk and John Luke Picard and we are all set.

So we got some sample records to work with. Funny story, when I did this class the first time back in 2002, I just put in some random email addresses like Joe Blow at Yahoo.com. Well, a couple of people who actually had those addresses said to me, hey, you used my real email address in your class. So from now on, I will only use email addresses at domains that I own like emichron.com and 599city.com. And there is my actual email address right there, emichron@gmail. Although I prefer you contact me using the website because I get so much email, I would not want to miss your email. If you want to contact me, use the website.

I hope all of the phone numbers that have been here are bogus, although I have not gotten any complaints about those. People are more likely to fire off an email than they are to make a phone call.

Now let us talk about deleting a record. If you come over here and you start typing something in, let us say, I do not know, Kenny. And then you realize, oh, you know what? I really do not want that record there. So I am still editing the record. You can see the pencil is there. If you decide while you are mid-edit that you do not want it anymore, press escape. It will go away. That is if you have not saved the record yet.

Now let us say you did save that record. Let us say I type in Kenny. Now the first thing I want you to notice right there, look what happened. It was 17 before. Now it is 18. Where did 17 go? Once an auto number is assigned, the second you start typing in that first character in that first name field, that ought to be the first name. The auto number gets assigned and it is gone forever. You cannot get it back. There is a more advanced way to get it back if you really want to know how. I will put a link down below. But the bottom line is you do not have to worry about that. That customer ID is meaningless to you.

I get emails all the time from people like, oh, I am missing some auto numbers. Do not worry about it. Do not worry about those auto numbers. Those are not for you. Those are for Access. Later on when we start making relationships between our tables, Access will use those.

Now, let us say for example, I have already saved Kenny's records. He is saved. Pressing escape now will do nothing. So to delete that record, click over here. That is called the record selector. This little gray box over here. If I click there, I have got Peter Smith selected. Right there, I have got Anna P. Corps selected. I want to select Kenny's record. Yes, you can select multiple records by clicking and dragging. Just like in Excel. But be careful. It is very dangerous if you are going to delete them.

There, select Kenny, press delete on the keyboard and it is gone. You might get a delete confirmation up. You might see this guy. It says you are about to delete one record. If you click yes, you will not be able to undo this delete operation. Are you sure you want to delete? Once you delete a record, there is no undo operation. Make sure you have a good backup before you do any major deleting in your database. Be very careful.

I am going to say yes and then it is gone. In case you are curious, you can find that setting about the delete confirmation under file and then options and then under client settings right here where it says confirm record changes. If you turn that off, it will not prompt you every time you delete a record. I personally like it off. So I am going to leave that off.

That is all I had initially when I deleted that first record. Then I went back in and turned it on so I could show you the delete confirmation. Just be careful and make sure you have good backups. If you do not trust yourself, leave that checked on.

Now notice the next record that I add is going to be record 19 now. See that? Those auto numbers get used. I am going to press escape a couple times and I will come back to a blank new record. Now the next one should be 20 and so on. See how it works? Do not worry. Do not stress about those auto numbers. They are meaningless to you.

This is about the time I usually throw this slide up, back up your data every night regularly. I use Google Drive. I basically copy my files over to Google Drive and they get copied up to Google's cloud server. So it is off-site. If something happens to my office, my database files are all safe. I have got a whole separate lesson on backing up your data. I will put a link down below. It is important. Make sure you backup your data. If you are running your business out of your Access database, back it up every night.

So back in the database. I am going to resize a couple of things. See that customer ID does not have to be that big. First name can be a little bit smaller. You can double click here to watch this, double click and it will resize it to be as wide as it needs to be. Maybe the company name can be a little bit bigger. Maybe that can be a little bit bigger. State can be smaller and so on. Just size these the way you want to see them.

Again, remember, we are editing data in the table. So this is just for you. Your end users are not going to interface with your tables.

Let us say you want to move country out in front of the address. You can move these columns around in here. Watch. Click to highlight the column. Let the mouse go. Then click and drag it wherever you want it to go. See that dark thick line right there? Let it go. And then we just move the field. A little bit easier than moving columns around Excel.

The important thing to know about Access is that it is impossible to mix up data. Like in Excel, you can easily move someone's address, let us say, off of the same row. You cannot do that in Access. In Access, each one of these rows is bound as a record. You cannot sort a column and scramble the data like you can in Excel.

You can move multiple columns too. For example, let us say I want to move all of this stuff here. Address, City, State, and Zip in front of country. So watch this. See, I have got the down arrow there. Click and drag to select multiple columns. Let the mouse go. Then click a second time and drag to the left. And now it is kind of back to the way it started. I think I can move those fields around. Again, this is just a layout change. We really have not changed the design of the table, just its layout. This is just for you.

Now let us say I want to close this table. I am going to click on the close button. Access says, do you want to save changes to the layout of the table customer T? The layout changes. The moving around of stuff. The resizing of the columns, the moving things around. Yes, sure. Go ahead. Write in the table. So the next time you open it up, it will look the same way. For the most part. Some things do not save, but we will talk about that later.

The only time you have to worry about saving changes is if you make layout changes or design changes. Remember, as you are entering data, every time you move from record to record or close the table or form, all that data that you type in is saved each time you move from record to record. So you do not have to worry like a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. You do not have to worry about constantly saving your work. Access saves it for you.

Now that we have got some data in our table, in the next lesson we are going to talk about sorting and filtering.

Quiz

Q1. What happens if you leave a non-critical field, like phone number or zip code, blank when entering a record in Access?
A. The field remains blank, which is preferred over entering incorrect data
B. Access will not let you save the record
C. The record is automatically deleted
D. Access assigns a default value to the field

Q2. What is the purpose of the auto number field, such as Customer ID, in an Access table?
A. To provide a unique identifier for each record that Access uses internally
B. To display an important business code to end users
C. To store customer email addresses
D. To calculate discounts automatically

Q3. What is the Required property used for in Access tables?
A. To force users to enter a value in a specific field
B. To assign default auto number values
C. To create new tables automatically
D. To make the table visible to other users

Q4. Why is it better to leave a field blank than to enter incorrect data?
A. It is easier to find and correct missing information later
B. Access will delete any incorrect data
C. Blank fields cause the table to corrupt
D. Access will not allow sorting of records with blank fields

Q5. What does the validation rule property allow you to do in Access?
A. Limit the range or type of data that can be entered in a field
B. Sort records alphabetically
C. Remove duplicate records automatically
D. Hide specific fields from users

Q6. Where can you download the sample database for the lessons?
A. From the instructor's website
B. From an automatically generated Access link
C. From inside Access Tools menu
D. From the Microsoft Store

Q7. What must you do before you can open the Access database file downloaded as a zip file?
A. Extract the file from the zip archive
B. Click 'Open File' in your browser
C. Convert it from .accdb to .mdb format
D. Install a special Access plugin

Q8. What is the function of the 'Enable Content' button when opening a downloaded Access database?
A. It marks the database as safe and enables active content
B. It deletes all current records in the database
C. It creates a backup automatically
D. It updates the database to the latest version

Q9. If you delete a record that used an auto number, what happens to that number?
A. It is gone forever and will not be reused
B. It is immediately reused by the next new record
C. It causes an error in the database
D. It is visible to end users as a missing number

Q10. What is the record selector in Access?
A. The gray box at the left of each record row used to select records
B. The tab at the top for each open table
C. The menu option for filtering records
D. The button used to add new fields

Q11. When deleting records, what does turning off the delete confirmation warning do?
A. Deletes records immediately without a prompt
B. Prevents deletion of any records
C. Backs up all records before deleting
D. Requires a password to delete records

Q12. How can you resize a column in an Access table?
A. Double-click the boundary between field headers
B. Use the Format menu only
C. Install a special add-in
D. Only in Access Design View

Q13. Can moving columns in an Access data table layout cause data to become misaligned or mixed up?
A. No, Access binds each row as a record, keeping data together
B. Yes, data can be scrambled like in Excel
C. Only if you have duplicates
D. Yes, but only when sorted by multiple fields

Q14. Will layout changes, such as moving or resizing columns, affect the table's core design?
A. No, they only affect the user's current view
B. Yes, they will change field names and types
C. Yes, and they will also delete some records
D. No, but they require a database restart

Q15. What happens in Access when you move from one record to another or close the table while editing data?
A. The data you entered is automatically saved
B. You are prompted to save each change
C. The data is lost unless you click Save
D. All records are refreshed to blank

Q16. Who should work directly with Access tables to enter data?
A. Developers only
B. All end users
C. IT department only
D. Only managers

Q17. What tool should end users primarily use to interact with the database?
A. Forms
B. Tables
C. Reports
D. Queries

Q18. What is a recommended best practice for database safety?
A. Back up your database regularly, preferably off-site
B. Never use zip files
C. Email your database to users daily
D. Only use default passwords

Answers: 1-A; 2-A; 3-A; 4-A; 5-A; 6-A; 7-A; 8-A; 9-A; 10-A; 11-A; 12-A; 13-A; 14-A; 15-A; 16-A; 17-A; 18-A

DISCLAIMER: Quiz questions are AI generated. If you find any that are wrong, don't make sense, or aren't related to the video topic at hand, then please post a comment and let me know. Thanks.

Summary

Today's video from Access Learning Zone continues our work with entering data in Microsoft Access. In lesson seven, we're focusing on entering more records into our table and exploring some useful features and settings that will make working with our data easier.

We start off by entering a second customer into the table. For example, let's input Joe Smith who works at XYZ Corp, based at 101 Main Street, Buffalo, New York, 14220. In Access, each record is automatically assigned a Customer ID. This ID is generated by Access and just increments automatically, so you never need to worry about what the number is. It is only used internally by Access and has no real meaning for you as the user.

When it comes to entering data, I always say that having no data is better than having bad data. You should not force users to provide information like a zip code or a phone number, or even a last name, unless absolutely necessary for your business needs. If you require a field to be filled in, users might just type nonsense to get around the requirement. It is much easier, later on, to find records where data is missing and try to get the correct information, rather than trying to clean up bad data that was entered just to bypass a requirement. You can always use the Required property in Access to make certain fields mandatory, but only do this if it is truly essential. I will explain how to use the Required property in more detail in Access Beginner Four.

For fields like phone numbers, if you don't have the information, it is better to leave it blank. For example, I would enter 7165553333 for Joe's phone number, 500 employees, a discount rate of 10% (which can be entered as either 10 or 0.1), and a Customer Since date, like January 1, 1990. I previously made an error in the date field, which highlights another lesson - using validation rules. If your company was founded in 2000, for instance, you can set a validation rule to make sure the date entered is not before 2000 and is not after today's date. I will be covering validation rules in more detail in Access Beginner 3.

You can easily navigate the table using the arrow keys, just like in Excel. Once you've finished entering all of Joe's information, you will see the pencil icon disappear from the left side, indicating that the record has been saved. Access saves your changes automatically every time you move from one record to another.

For end users, you generally do not want them entering data directly into tables. That is what forms are for, and we will be building forms a little later. As a developer, though, it does help to put some sample records into a table once you've finished designing it. This helps you see how your tables and fields look with real data, allows you to test your queries, forms, and reports, and to adjust field widths and column layouts accordingly.

For class purposes, it is very helpful to have a good mix of sample customer records - from different states, with different data, and so on. If you want, you are welcome to type in your own sample data. If you would rather not, you can download a pre-filled version of the database from my website. The download page includes a zip file containing the database as it stands at this point in the course. To use it, simply extract the database file from the zip, save it somewhere convenient like your desktop, and open it up in Access. When you open a downloaded database, Access may warn you that active content has been disabled - this is just to protect you from potentially unsafe code. You can enable content to mark the file as safe. The sample database contains just a table with customer records, so there is no way for it to contain malicious code.

The sample records in the database also use only fake phone numbers and email addresses that belong to myself, so you do not need to worry about accidentally contacting real people.

Next, a quick note about how deleting records works. While you are still editing a new record and the pencil icon is visible, pressing the Escape key will undo your changes and remove the unsaved record. However, the moment you start typing in the first field, Access assigns an AutoNumber for the record. Even if you cancel now, the number is never reused. For example, if you see a Customer ID of 17 appear when you begin a record and you later delete that record, the next new record will jump to 18, not reuse 17. These gaps are normal and nothing you need to worry about. These AutoNumbers are completely meaningless to you as a user. They exist solely for Access to maintain internal relationships between records.

If you've fully saved a record that you want to delete, you can select it using the record selector at the left of the row and press the Delete key. Access may prompt you to confirm the deletion. After deleting a record, there is no undo, so make sure you have good backups before deleting any important data. You can turn off the delete confirmation under File, Options, and then Client Settings by unchecking the confirm record changes setting. I personally turn this off, but if you are concerned about making accidental deletions, you may want to leave it on.

Whenever you add new records after deleting some, AutoNumbers continue incrementing from where they left off. They never fill in gaps.

At this point, I always remind students to back up your database regularly - ideally every night. I personally use Google Drive for my backups. All my important files get copied to Google Drive, so if anything happens to my computer or office, my files are safe off-site. Backing up is essential for any business running on an Access database.

When working in the table view, you can resize columns by dragging or double-clicking their headers to adjust the width. Adjust fields like Customer ID, First Name, and State to be narrower, while letting columns like Company Name be wider as needed.

You can also move columns into a different order. Select a column by clicking its header, then drag it to the new position. You can move one or several columns at a time, and Access will rearrange them. This changes only the layout for you as a developer and does not affect the underlying design of the table or how the data is stored. You cannot accidentally scramble your data in Access by sorting columns as you can in Excel - each record stays intact no matter what.

When you close your table after making layout changes like resizing or moving columns, Access will ask if you want to save those layout changes. It is safe to say yes, and the next time you open the table, your changes will be preserved. Keep in mind that these are just layout changes and do not affect the actual structure or data in the table.

And finally, remember that data is automatically saved in Access every time you move from record to record, so you never have to worry about manually saving your work after each entry.

Now that your table includes some sample data, you are ready for the next lesson, where we will focus on sorting and filtering records.

You can find a complete video tutorial with step-by-step instructions on everything discussed here on my website at the link below. Live long and prosper, my friends.

Topic List

Entering records into an Access table
AutoNumber fields and their purpose
Why not to force users to enter unnecessary data
Explanation of the Required property
Entering and editing customer data
Using the arrow keys to navigate records
Understanding record selectors
How to delete unsaved records
How to delete saved records
AutoNumber behavior after deleting a record
Delete confirmation warning and how to disable it
Importance of regular database backups
Resizing columns in Access tables
Moving columns in Access tables
Saving layout changes in a table
Viewing and working with sample database records
Downloading and extracting a sample database
Handling security warnings in Access
Differences between developer and end user data entry
Why sample data is important for development

Article

In this lesson, we will continue working with entering data in Microsoft Access. We will add more records to our customer table and discuss several important concepts and interface tips to make data entry easier and more efficient. If you want to avoid typing in a lot of sample data, you can download a copy of a sample database, which contains all the records you need.

To start, I am entering a second customer into our table. The customer is Joe Smith. As I type in his details, notice that Access automatically assigns the next customer ID. In this case, the customer ID is set to 2. Access uses an auto number field to increment these IDs automatically, so there is no need to worry about their sequence or meaning. They are just for internal reference within Access, and do not hold any actual value for you as the user.

Joe Smith works at XYZ Corp, located at 101 Main Street, Buffalo, New York, 14220. I tab past the country field since the default is U.S., and there are no website or email addresses available for Joe. This is a good example of when it is better to leave some fields blank rather than enter incorrect information. For example, if you do not have someone's email address or phone number, it is better to leave those blank than to enter something random, like 555222 as a phone number. Bad data can cause problems later when you try to clean it up, while missing data is much easier to identify and update correctly. You should only make a field required if it is absolutely necessary for your business process. Access provides a "required" property for fields, which you can use for this purpose, but I generally avoid this unless it is essential.

Continuing with our example, Joe's phone number is 7165553333, the company has 500 employees, and the discount rate can be entered either as 10 or as 0.1; Access will handle both correctly. For the "Customer Since" field, be sure to enter valid dates. For instance, you would not want to accidentally enter a founding date before the company existed. To prevent invalid entries, you can set up a validation rule in Access. For example, you could require the date to be after January 1, 2000, and before today. The validation rule might look something like this:

>= #1/1/2000# AND <= Date()

Once you finish entering the information, you can use the arrow keys to move around, similar to how you navigate in Excel.

Once the record is finished and you move to the next row, you will see that the pencil icon disappears on the left, indicating that Access has saved your data. Access saves records automatically whenever you move to a new row or close the table, so you do not have to worry about saving like you would with a document in Word or Excel.

As a developer, it is helpful to enter a few sample records into your tables once they are set up. This lets you see how your tables will look, verify that everything works as expected, and determine whether fields are the correct size. It is important to remember that your end users should not enter or view data directly in tables. Instead, they will use forms that you provide. Having sample data is also useful for building queries and reports, as it allows you to check the results with real examples.

For this reason, the sample database available for download contains several customer records with a variety of names and data. These sample records help illustrate how to sort, filter, and query the data.

To use the sample database, go to the download page and save the file to your computer. The database will probably arrive in a zip file. If you are unfamiliar with zip files, they are simply archives that bundle files together. You will want to extract the Access database file (the .accdb file) from the zip archive before opening it in Access. Once you open the file, you may see a security warning at the top of the Access window. This is to protect you from potentially dangerous content, but as long as you are downloading a database from a trusted source, you can enable content. A database with only tables and no forms or modules is not able to contain any malicious code.

Once you have your sample database open, you will see all the customer records, ready for you to use. These records contain made-up names and email addresses from domains that I own, so there are no worries about using real addresses. All the phone numbers are fake too, for demonstration purposes.

When entering or editing data, you may want to undo a record before saving it. If you are still editing a record and see a pencil icon to the left, you can press the Escape key and Access will cancel the changes. However, once you save the record and the pencil icon disappears, pressing Escape will not remove it. At that point, to delete a record, you need to use the record selector. The record selector is the small gray box on the left side of each row in the table. Click it to select a row. You can select multiple rows just like in Excel, but be careful with deletions because there is no undo after deleting a record. Once you have selected the record or records you want to delete, simply press the Delete key on your keyboard. Access may prompt you with a confirmation warning that says you are about to delete records and that this action cannot be undone. Make sure you have good backups of your database before deleting important information.

If you find the confirmation warning annoying, you can turn it off. Go to the File menu, choose Options, then select Client Settings (or Advanced in some versions). Under the Confirm section, you will find the checkbox for "Record changes." If you uncheck this, Access will not ask before deleting records. However, for most users, it is safer to leave this option on.

You might notice that after deleting a record, the next auto number assigned will not fill in gaps from deleted records. For example, if you add a new record after deleting customer 17, Access will assign customer ID 18. The gaps are not a problem. These auto numbers are just for internal use and do not need to be sequential. They are primarily used behind the scenes, especially when creating relationships between tables. Do not worry about missing or skipped numbers.

It is also a good practice to back up your data frequently. You can back up your data by copying your database file to a cloud service like Google Drive or another secure location. Having off-site backups is essential in case anything happens to your computer or office.

When working with tables in Access, you can customize the layout for your own use. You might want to resize columns, for example, making the customer ID column narrower or the company name column wider, so the information is easier to read. You can double-click the right edge of a column header to auto-resize it to fit the longest value in that column. You can also move columns around simply by clicking a column header, releasing the mouse, then clicking and dragging it to a new location. A thick black line will show where the column will appear when you let go. This only changes the view of the table for you and does not affect the data or the structure of the table.

You can select multiple columns to move by clicking and dragging across the column headers, then clicking and dragging the selected group to a new position. This makes it easy to rearrange sections of your table. Remember, changes to the layout like resizing or moving columns are just for how the data appears when you view the table. The underlying data does not change, and the design of the table remains the same.

When you close the table after making layout changes, Access will prompt you to save changes to the table layout. If you choose to save, your column sizing and order will remain for the next time you open the table.

Keep in mind that sorting columns directly in a table can be useful for your own work as a developer, but your users will interact with data through forms. Access tables are designed to keep data secure and organized, to avoid the kinds of mistakes that can happen in Excel, like accidentally moving a cell and separating it from its correct row. Access always keeps records intact, and moving or sorting columns does not compromise the integrity of the data.

In summary, entering data in Access is straightforward once your tables and fields are ready. Use tab and arrow keys to move through records, leave fields blank if you do not have the correct data, and do not stress about auto number values or gaps caused by deletions. Always back up your work regularly, and feel free to download and use sample databases to save time. With your sample data in place, you are ready to move on to learning how to sort and filter your data.