Database objects are the main players in an Access database. Altogether, you have six different types of database objects:

• Tables store information. Tables are the heart of any database, and you can create as many tables as you need to store different types of information. A fitness database could track your daily running log, your inventory of exercise equipment, and the number of high-protein whey milkshakes you down each day, as three separate tables.
• Queries let you quickly perform an action on a table. Usually, this action involves retrieving a choice bit of information (like the 10 top-selling food items at Ed’s Roadside Dinner, or all the purchases you made in a single day). However, you can also use queries to apply changes.
• Forms are attractive windows that you create, arrange, and colorize. Forms provide an easy way to view or change the information in a table.
• Reports help you print some or all of the information in a table. You can choose where the information appears on the printed page, how it’s grouped and sorted, and how it’s formatted.
• Macros are mini-programs that automate custom tasks. Macros are a simple way to get custom results without becoming a programmer.
• Modules are files that contain Visual Basic code. You can use this code to do just about anythingfrom updating 10,000 records to firing off an email. For more on Visual Basic, see Access 2007: The Missing Manual.

Access gurus refer to all these database ingredients as objects because you manage them all in essentially the same way. If you want to use a particular object, then you add it to your database, give it a name, and then fine-tune it. Later on, you can view your objects, rename them, or delete ones you don’t want anymore.

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Tip: Designing a database is the process of adding and configuring database objects. For those keeping score, an Access database can hold up to 32,768 separate objects.
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In this chapter, you’ll consider only the most fundamental type of database object: tables. But first, you need to learn a bit more about databases and the Access environment.

1. 1. Select Office Button➪New. The New Document dialog box appears.
2. 2. Click the Blank Document icon if it isn’t selected by default.
3. 3. Click Create. The new, blank document appears.

Typing text

When you create a new, blank document, you can begin typing text to fill the page. As you type, each character appears to the right of the blinking vertical insertion point. You can use the Backspace and Delete keys to delete text, the Spacebar to enter spaces, and all the other keys that you’re using for typing. Word also enables you to start a line of text anywhere on the page using the Click and Type feature. (This feature only works in the Print Layout view, so to learn more about that view, see the later section describing Word 2007’s views.) To take advantage of Click and Type, move the mouse pointer over a blank area of the page. If you don’t see formatting symbols below the I-beam mouse pointer, click once. This enables Click and Type and displays its special mouse pointer. Then, you can double-click to position the pointer on the page and type your text. Figure 4-1 shows snippets of text added to a page using Click and Type.

Using word wrap

By default, the margins for a blank document in Word 2007 are 1″ on the left and right, which is a quarter inch less than previous versions of Word. When you type enough text to fill each line, hitting the right margin boundary, Word automatically moves the insertion point to the next line. This automated feature is called word wrap, and it’s a heck of a lot more convenient than having to make a manual carriage return at the end of this line.

If you adjust the margins for the document, word wrap always keeps your text within the new margin boundaries. Similarly, if you apply a right indent, divide the document into columns, or create a table and type in a table cell, word wrap automatically creates a new line of text at every right boundary. Just keep typing until you want or need to start a new paragraph (covered shortly). Later chapters cover changing margins and indents and working with tables.

Inserting versus overtyping

Like its prior versions, Word 2007 offers two modes for entering text: insert mode and overtype mode. In the default mode, insert mode, if you click within existing text and type, Word inserts the added text between the existing characters, moving text to the right of the insertion point farther right to accommodate your additions, and rewrapping the line as needed. In contrast, when you switch to overtype mode, any text you type replaces text to the right of the insertion point.

Overtyping is a fine method of data entry—when it’s the mode that you want. Unfortunately, in previous Word versions, the Insert key on the keyboard toggled between insert and overtype modes by default. Because the Insert key is found above or right next to the Delete key on the keyboard, many a surprised user would accidentally hit the Insert key and then unhappily type right over their text.

In Word 2007, the Insert key’s control of overtype mode is turned off by default. You can use the Word Options dialog box to turn overtype mode on and off, and also to enable the Insert key’s control of overtype mode. Select Office Button➪Word Options, and then click Advanced in the list at the left side of the Word Options dialog box. Use the Use Overtype Mode checkbox (Figure 4-2) to toggle overtype mode on and off, and the Use the Insert Key to Control Overtype Mode checkbox to toggle the Insert key’s control of overtype mode on and off. Click OK to apply your changes.

Using default tabs

Every new, blank document has default tab stops already set up for you. These tabs are set at 1/2 inch (.5″) intervals along the whole width of the document between the margins. To align text to any of these default tab stops, press the Tab key. You can press Tab multiple times if you need to allow more width between the information that you’re using the tab stops to align.

To display the rulers so that you can better work with text alignment features like tabs in a document, click the View Ruler button that appears at the top of the vertical scroll bar at the right side of the Word window.

Making a new paragraph

In previous versions of Word, when you wanted to create a new paragraph in a blank document, you had to press the Enter key twice. That’s because the default body text style didn’t provide for any extra spacing after a paragraph mark, which is a hidden symbol inserted when you press Enter.

In Word 2007, pressing Enter by default not only inserts the paragraph mark to create a new paragraph, but also inserts extra spacing between paragraphs to separate them visually and eliminate the need to press Enter twice. As shown in Figure 4-3, when you press Enter after a paragraph the insertion point moves down to the beginning of a new paragraph, and Word includes spacing above the new paragraph.

Figure 2-6. Tweaking the regional settings on your computer gives you complete control over how Excel recognizes dates. Use the pull-down menus to specify the date separator, order of month, day, and year components in a date, and how Excel should interpret two-digit years. You can mix and match these settings freely, although you could wind up with a computer that’s completely counter intuitive to other people.

2.2.1. AutoComplete

Some worksheets require that you type in the same information row after row. For example, if you’re creating a table to track the value of all your Sesame Street collectibles, you can type in Kermit only so many times before you start turning green. Excel tries to help you out with its AutoComplete feature, which examines what you type, compares it against previous entries in the same column, and, if it recognizes the beginning of an existing word, fills it in.

For instance, in your Sesame Street worksheet, if you already have Kermit in the Characters column, when you start typing a new entry in that column beginning with the letter K, Excel automatically fills in the whole word Kermit. Excel then selects the letters that it’s added (in this case, ermit). You now have two options:

• If you want to accept the AutoComplete text, move to another cell. For example, when you hit the right arrow key or press Enter to move down, Excel leaves the word Kermit behind.

• If you want to blow off Excel’s suggestion, just keep typing. Because Excel automatically selects the AutoComplete portion of the word (ermit), your next keystrokes overtype that text. Or, if you find the AutoComplete text is distracting, press Delete to remove it right away.

How Excel decides your data is text

If your cell meets any of the following criteria, Excel automatically treats the content as ordinary text:

• It contains any letters. Thus, C123 is text, not a number.

• It contains any punctuation that Excel can’t interpret numerically. Punctuation allowed in numbers and dates includes the comma (,), the decimal point (.), and the forward slash (/) or dash (-) for dates. When you type in any other punctuation, Excel treats the cell as text. Thus, 14! is text, not a number.

Occasionally, Excel reads your data the wrong way. For example, you may have a value like a social security number or a credit card number that’s made up entirely of numeric characters but that you want to treat like text because you don’t ever want to perform calculations with it. But Excel doesn’t know what you’re up to, and so it automatically treats the value as a number. You can also run into problems when you precede text with the equal sign (which tells Excel that you have a formula in progress), or when you use a series of numbers and dashes that you don’t intend to be part of a date (for example, you want to enter 1-2-3 but you don’t want Excel to read it as January 2, 2007which is what it wants to do).

In all these cases, the solution’s simple. Before you type the cell value, start by typing an apostrophe (’). The apostrophe tells Excel to treat the cell content as text. Figure 2-3 shows you how it works.

Figure 2-3. To have Excel treat any number, date, or time as text, just precede the value with an apostrophe (you can see the apostrophe in the formula bar, but not in the cell). This worksheet shows the result of typing 1-2-3, both with and without the initial apostrophe. When you store 1-2-3 as text, Excel left-aligns it, as if it were an all-text cell (and puts a tiny green triangle in the corner of the cell to let you know you may have made a mistake). The date, on the other hand, is right-aligned.

When you precede a numeric value with an apostrophe, Excel checks out the cell to see what’s going on. When Excel determines that it can represent the content as a number, it places a green triangle in the top left corner of the cell and gives you a few options for dealing with the cell, as shown in Figure 2-4.

Figure 2-4. In this worksheet, the number 42 is stored as text, thanks to the apostrophe that precedes it. Excel notices the apostrophe, wonders if it’s an unintentional error, and flags the cell by putting a tiny green triangle in the top-left corner. If you move to the cell, an exclamation mark icon appears, and, if you click that, a menu appears, letting you choose to convert the number or ignore the issue for this cell. Excel provides a similar menu if you enter a text date that has a two-digit year, as in ‘1-1-07. In this case, the menu allows you to convert the two-digit date to a four-digit date that has a year starting with 19 or 20.

But before I continue, let me first introduce tate.co.uk

Tate is a national office recruitment business founded in 1985. They specialise in sourcing staff for Office Jobs, including data entry jobs, secretarial, HR jobs and more. They claim that what makes them different is their unique blend of innovative processes, consistently high levels of service and a real passion for their work. Furthermore, what makes them special is the way they build ongoing relationships with their customers and candidates. These relationships are based on total honesty, a genuine commitment to quality and a constant desire for continuous improvement.

It seems to me that they have a unique philosophy which is integral to all of their service. After I learn more about them, I found there are 7 interesting Tate’s values that intrigue me very much. The first one is respect; that they don’t see a pot of gold when they look at people. Instead, it is the people’s hopes and dreams, their goals and their values. They listen carefully and respect everything their clients, candidates, suppliers and staff saya and do. That’s why they are truly different. Many admire their principles and infact proud to be part of their story.

That is nice. I think it is important to be understood bacause each of us has different values regarding our jobs.

Take for example a personal assistant and receptionist job. For you who are looking for PA Jobs, then you must already knew that personal assistant jobs are not as simple as assisting a busy or successful person to do daily personal tasks. The role of a personal assistant has expanded as the business environment has required more responsibilities. Today, a Personal Assistant may be responsible for screening incoming calls, checking emails, reviewing documentation, sending mail, doing research, scheduling reservations, booking meetings, etc.

Now lets compare it with Receptionist Jobs; their work is usually performed in a waiting area such as a lobby or front office desk of an organization or business. PA and receptionist seems similar in some way. In many cases the titles are used interchangeably. But a personal assistant is actualy just a PC word for a secretary. A secretary usually does more specialized work, like writing letters, handling phone calls and letters for the boss. Your computer skills have to be much better to be a personal assistant since most of your time will be spent on a computer.

So how does this affect you? Well, simple, do you enjoy working with people or things? This preference alone will influence you career choice. And this is what Tate is listening to from their candidates. Nice.

Most of the time, when you enter information in Excel, you don’t explicitly indicate the type of data. Instead, Excel examines the information you’ve typed in, and, based on your formatting and other clues, classifies it automatically. Excel distinguishes between four core data types:

• Ordinary text. This data type includes column headings, descriptions, and any content that Excel can’t identify as one of the other data types.

• Numbers. This data type includes prices, integers, fractions, percentages, and every other type of numeric data. Numbers are the basic ingredient of most Excel worksheets.

• Dates and times. This data type includes dates (like Oct 3, 2007), times (like 4:30 p.m.), and combined date and time information (like Oct 3, 2007, 4:30 p.m.). You can enter date and time information in a variety of formats.

• True or false values. This data type (known in geekdom as a Boolean value) can contain one of two things: TRUE or FALSE (displayed in all capitals). You don’t need Boolean data types in most worksheets, but they’re useful in worksheets that include Visual Basic macro code or that use complex formulas that evaluate conditions.

One useful way to tell how Excel is interpreting your data is to look at cell alignment, as explained in Figure 2-1.

Figure 2-1. Unless you explicitly change the alignment, Excel always left-aligns text (that is, it lines it up against the left edge of a cell), as in column A. On the other hand, it always right-aligns numbers and dates, as in columns B and C. And it centers Boolean values, as in column D.

As Figure 2-1 shows, Excel can display numbers and dates in several different ways. For example, some of the numbers include decimal places, one uses a comma, and one has a currency symbol. Similarly, one of the time values uses the 12-hour clock while another uses the 24-hour clock. Other entries include only date information or both date and time information. You assume that when you type in a number, it will appear in the cell exactly the way you typed it. For example, when you type 3-comma-0-0-0 you expect to see 3,000. However, that doesn’t always happen. To see the problem in action, try typing 3,000 in a cell. It shows up exactly the way you entered it. Then, type over that value with 2000. The new number appears as 2,000. Excel remembers your first entry, and assumes that you want to use thousand separators in this cell all the time.

These differences may seem like a spreadsheet free-for-all, but don’t despairyou can easily set the formatting of numbers and dates. At this point, all you need to know is that the values Excel stores in each cell don’t need to match exactly the values that it displays in each cell. For example, the number 4300 could be formatted as plain old 4300 or as the dollar amount $4,300. Excel lets you format your numbers so you have exactly the representation you want. At the same time, Excel treats all numbers equivalently, no matter how they’re formatted, which lets you combine them together in calculations. Figure 2-2 shows you how to find the underlying stored value of a cell.

Figure 2-2. You can see the underlying value that Excel is storing for a cell by selecting the cell and then glancing at the formula bar. In this sheet, you can see that the value $299.99 is actually stored without the dollar currency symbol, which Excel applied only as part of the display format. Similarly, Excel stores the number 2,000 without the comma; it stores the date 1-Jun-07 as 6/1/2007; the time 12:30 p.m. as 12:30:00 PM, and the time 14:00:00 as 2:00:00 PM.

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The trick here is to create a section break between the parts of the document where you want to use the different page numbers. A section is a document part that stores page layout options such margins, page size, page orientation, columns, line numbering, and footnotes and endnotes. The transition from one section to another is called a section break. Sections also include headers and footers, and we’ll use that fact to set up our different numbering schemes.

The first step is to create the section break, which you do by following these steps:

1. Position the cursor at the point where you want the new section to start.
2. Choose Page Layout, Breaks. Word displays a menu of break options.
3. In the Section Breaks group, click the type of section break you want:

Next Page-Starts a new section on a new page.

Continuous-Starts a new section at the cursor. (Note that this command doesn’t create a page break, so you probably won’t use it in this context.)

Even Page-Starts a new section on the next even-numbered page.

Odd Page-Starts a new section on the next odd-numbered page.

TIP

To show the current section number in the status bar, right-click the status bar, and then click to activate the Section item.

You’re now ready to add your two different page number formats-one for each of the two sections in your document. The idea here is to add page numbers to the document and then break the link between the second section header and the first section header. This enables you to set up different page numbering schemes in each section. Follow these steps:

1. With the cursor in the same position as when you created the section page, choose Insert, Page Number, Top of Page (or another position, if you prefer, such as Bottom of Page) and then click a page number format. Word adds a header to the document and displays the page number.
2. Under Header & Footer Tools, choose Design, Link to Previous to deactivate the command. This tells Word that the header in section 2 should not be the same as the header in section 1.
3. Choose Insert, Page Number, Format Page Numbers. Word displays the Page Number Format dialog box.
4. Use the Number Format list to click the page number format you want to use in sec­tion 2 (such as 1, 2, 3…).
5. Click the Start At option and use the associated spin box to set the starting page num­ber for section 2. In most cases, you’ll want to start the new section’s page numbers at 1, as shown in Figure 1.



Figure 1 In the second section, you’ll most likely want to start the numbering over again at 1.

6. Click OK.
7. Under Header & Footer Tools, choose Design, Previous Section. Word displays the header and page numbers for the first section.
8. Choose Insert, Page Number, Format Page Numbers to open the Page Number Format dialog box.
9. Use the Number Format list to click the page number format you want to use in sec­tion 1 (such as i, ii, iii…).
10. Click OK.
11. Under Header & Footer Tools, choose Design, Close Header and Footer.

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Word gives you a couple of ways to do this, and the method you choose depends on when you want to insert the text: while you’re creating the numbered list or after you’ve finished the numbered list.

The easiest method is to insert the text after you have completed the numbered list:

1. Navigate to the end of the step before which you want to insert the non-numbered text.
2. Press Enter. Word inserts a new step.
3. Choose Home, Numbering to deactivate the Numbering button. Word converts the new step into a regular paragraph.
4. Insert your text.

To insert the text while you’re creating the numbered list, follow these steps:

1. Enter the step before which you want to insert the non-numbered text.
2. Press Enter twice. Word creates a regular paragraph.
3. Insert your text and press Enter to start a new paragraph.
4. Choose Home, Numbering. Word starts a new numbered list and displays a smart tag to the left of the first number.
5. Click the smart tag and then click Continue Numbering, as shown in Figure 1. Word resumes the numbering sequence of the previous numbered list.

Figure 1 When you resume the numbered list, click the smart tag and then click Continue Numbering.

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Business forecasting has been around for many years, and various methods have been developed-some more successful than others. The most common forecasting method is the qualitative “seat-of-the-pants” approach, in which a manager (or a group of managers) estimates future trends based on experience and knowledge of the market. This method, however, suffers from an inherent subjectivity and a short-term focus because many man­agers tend to extrapolate from recent experience and ignore the long-term trend. Other methods (such as averaging past results) are more objective but generally useful for fore­casting only a few months in advance.

In business, it’s becoming increasingly popular to use a statistical tool called regression analy­sis to determine the relationship between one phenomenon that depends on another. For example, car sales might be dependent on interest rates, and units sold might be dependent on the amount spent on advertising. The dependent phenomenon is called the dependent variable or the y-value, and the phenomenon upon which it’s dependent is called the inde­pendent variable or the x-value. (Think of a chart or graph on which the independent vari­able is plotted along the horizontal [x] axis and the dependent variable is plotted along the vertical [y] axis.)

Given these variables, you can do two things with regression analysis:

• Determine the relationship between the known x- and y-values and use the results to calculate and visualize the overall trend of the data.
• Use the existing trend to forecast new y-values.

With linear data, the dependent variable is related to the independent variable by some constant factor. For example, you might find that car sales (the dependent variable) increase by one million units whenever interest rates (the independent variable) decrease by 1 per­cent. Similarly, you might find that division revenue (the dependent variable) increases by $100,000 for every $10,000 you spend on advertising (the independent variable).

You make these sorts of determinations by examining the trend underlying the current data you have for the dependent variable. In linear regression, you analyze the current trend by calculating the line of best-fit, or the trendline. This is a line through the data points for which the differences between the points above and below the line cancel each other out (more or less).

The easiest way to see the best-fit line is to use a chart. Note, however, that this works only if your data is plotted using an XY (scatter) chart. For example, Figure 1 shows a work­sheet with quarterly sales figures plotted on an XY chart. Here, the quarterly sales are the dependent variable, and the period is the independent variable. (In this example, the inde­pendent variable is just time, represented, in this case, by fiscal quarters.)

The following steps show you how to add a trendline to a chart:

1. Click the chart to select it.
2. If more than one data series is plotted, click the series with which you want to work.
3. Choose Layout, Trendline, Linear Trendline. Excel inserts the trendline.

Figure 2 shows the best-fit trendline added to the chart.

CAUTION

It’s important not to view the trendline values as somehow trying to predict or estimate the actual y-values (sales).The trendline simply gives you an overall picture of how the y-values change when the x-values change.

Figure 1 To see a trendline through your data, first make sure the data is plotted using an XY chart.

Figure 2 The quarterly sales chart with a best-fit trendline added.

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We all have certain documents that we use almost every day. A good example is a to-do list that is checked constantly throughout the day and that is added to or deleted from as nec­essary. Any document that you look at many times a day gets boring awfully fast. To add some visual interest, Listing 1 presents a macro that applies a random background texture to a specified document.

Listing 1 A Macro That Applies a Random Background Texture to a Specified Document

Public Sub ApplyRandomTexture(doc As Document)
Dim i As Integer
‘
‘ Initialize the random number generator
‘
Randomize
‘
‘ Generate a random number between 1 and 24
‘
i = Int(24 * Rnd + 1)
‘
‘ Apply the random number as a background texture constant
‘
doc.Background.Fill.PresetTextured i
End Sub

Word has 24 predefined textures, and these are given the numbers 1 through 24 in the Office object model (these are msoTexture constants). This macro uses the Rnd function to generate a random number between 1 and 24 and then uses the PresetTextured property to apply the random texture. Note that the macro takes a Document variable named doc as its argument. To run this macro each time you open a document, display the Visual Basic Editor, click the doc­ument’s project, and then double-click the ThisDocument object. In the Object list, select Document and in the Event list select Open. In the Document_Open() stub that displays, add the ApplyRandomTexture ThisDocument statement, as shown in the following:
Private Sub Document_Open()
ApplyRandomTexture ThisDocument
End Sub

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