Microsoft Office 2007 has grown from what used to be a group of Microsoft programs into an Office System. Office 2007 released in November 2006 will be available in early 2007 for general users. The new GUI that you will be seeing is the most significant and immediately perceivable feature.
Gone are the menu and toolbars which are now replaced by a ribbon, a windows widget to end all widgets. This article is about Access 2007 which is of interest to our readers and therefore focuses on some of the features of the Access 2007 GUI explored by the author.
Changes to the look and feel features
The Microsoft Access program's look and feel has undergone a drastic change. The familiar looking window that opens when you click your desktop shortcut has changed completely as shown in the following picture. This three column arrangement has almost become a standard for software programs.
The Main menu and the toolbars are gone; in their place you have a "ribbon." The ribbon consolidates all of the relevant information you need to use in Access 2007 in this centralized location. No more menus, sub-menus, and sub-sub-menus. The stress involved in finding a control or a property by drill down is reduced, allowing you to focus on the ribbon. The next picture shows where you need to make your first click. Everything you want to do starts from here, the Microsoft Office Button, the over-sized round button with the Office logo.
Any time you need help just press F1. This is what shows up in a separate window when you click on F1. Well, you need to activate your program so that Microsoft can track down software piracy. The program I am using has already been activated, although presently I am not connected to the Internet.
When you click the Microsoft Office button icon you will see the following window, which is really a new package for the items that you used to see in other screens. Of course you can create new and open existing databases as well as manage your database from here.
Clicking on the Access Options at the bottom of the screen will show you the following screen. This is where Microsoft has done a good job of consolidating information and presenting it clearly. As you can see from the navigation items you can do a lot of things from here.
However everything has been crammed into these navigated items with lots of details. This is shown for the Object Designers menu item in the next picture.
In the Personalize menu you can customize the items which will affect the MS Office programs such as: ScreenTips, Shortcut keys; color schemes; default database file and default database folder; and sort order for a new database. You may also set the language from a literally vast number of languages from Afrikaans to Yoruba including many lesser known South Indian and African languages. You can even find Kannada, the language spoken by the master programmers in Bangalore, India. In the Datasheet menu you can make changes to how the data sheet looks, such as default colors, gridlines and cells to default fonts and font options. Although I am not sure why one would go to such an extent to make the data sheet look that good.
The proofing menu really customizes how you make proof reading your document easier like auto correction, flagging repeated words, applying accents to foreign words, and so forth.
The advanced menu options deal with editing of the records, and display (show status bar, show animation, show Smart tags, Macro design options, etc). Setting printing options can be configured. The general tab allows you to specify features such as four-digit year; user interface errors with sound feedback; and so on. The Web Options... is not active except for read-only files (probably this is set for the future Data Access Pages inclusion in a future version).
The service options are for tracking user interaction for monitoring purposes; it sends back information to MS. In Access 2007 the Quick Access Toolbar has mushroomed into a mini-application in itself; you can add/remove programs from a large number of items, from database related items to DML operations as shown in this Customization Menu item. The new format caters to Access 2000(v9),2002-2003(v10) and the new Access 2007(v12) formats.
I made a few selections, threw in a Separator and created a quick access tool bar. When I clicked OK to the selection the display changed as shown.
This created a short toolbar with my chosen items. The tooltips show the menu item in text when you hover over the items as shown.
A variety of database categories are available as templates. Companies can use their own staff to set up some custom applications using these templates. A large selection of templates covering a wide range of business needs are available at the Microsoft office online, from where they can be brought into the application as shown in the next picture. The following are some of the templates available:
Accounting and Finance
Assess and Inventories
Budgeting
Education
HR
Marketing
Project and Tea Management
Sales
In this screen you may also create a new database by clicking on the Blank Database icon in the middle window. In the open recent database window a list of recently opened databases will be shown. I created a database and afterward deleted the same, but somehow the program refused to update this information (first figure). The database was even deleted from the Recycle Bin. You may also see the new file extension, Database1.accdb (the three letter file extension mdb is gone).
Creating a new blank database
Click on the Blank database icon in the middle of the screen in the main window. This opens the following window.
The database name is changed to TestDec2006 as well as its default folder. In my previous computers the database icons blew up the My Documents folders to the point that scrolling was a problem. This time all Microsoft Access Databases will go into a single folder, AccessDataBases as shown.
When you save the database with a name, and after indicating a folder, it opens with this default view with Table1 as shown here.
This is a re-sampled version of a large screen, but even so, Microsoft's screen designers have done a good job of cramming a lot of functionality into an easily resizable screen. The TestDec2006 database took only 234 KB of memory (96 KB in Access 2000).
The following pictures show the ribbon for the main four tabs in Access 2007. Each tab has been cut vertically and presented in two pieces to improve readability of the scaled screen shot. After the main tab, the tabs at the bottom of the ribbon choose the submenu items.
Home
Create
External Data
Database Tools
Summary
The ribbon appears to be the main feature of the new look. The changed file extension for the database is another major change. The much-advertised Data Access Pages of the previous versions are not supported. However one may be able to read (read-only) a data access page created using an earlier version.
The idea of the ribbon was to concentrate information that was distributed across the application in earlier versions. However, it does have a cramped look. What used to be Tools-->Options has a changed appearance which is somewhat more appealing. It remains to check other advertised advantages. In my humble opinion, Microsoft should market two items: one for those who use it as a basic word processor ("simple folks") and another for the power users who want all these bells and whistles. I am a home user and I certainly do not care to access a legal document template.
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