how to create a database in Microsoft Access brought to you by accesslearningzone.com I am your instructor Richard Rost to create a new database in Microsoft Access start by opening access up now if you've previously opened databases on this machine before you'll see them listed down here under recent you'll also notice some templates up here and these are other databases built by other people and this is fine if you want to work with someone else's databases but if you want to build your own database click on this blank database right here you will be asked for a file name for your database the default is database one not very descriptive so let's click in here and let's type in customers this file is going to be saved in your documents folder whatever your user documents folder is if you want to change that you can click this button here to browse and put it somewhere else I'm going to click create and a blank new brand new database will be created for me now in a Microsoft database all of the data is stored in one or more tables you can kind of think of tables like Excel spreadsheets access starts you off with your first table called table one we're going to rename it in just a second but unlike a spreadsheet you can't just type anything you want wherever in Access you want to Define your Fields or columns and give them good names for example right here where it says click to add click on that and it wants to know what type of data you want to store in this particular field short text number currency date and time lots of different options for now just pick short text and now it says field one give it a name I'm going to type in first name no spaces take it from me this is just one of my tips is having done this for almost 30 years now don't put spaces in your field names alright so this first field is going to be first name capital F capital N first name then press enter or tab that'll move you to the next column again pick short text and type in last name no space capital L capital N press enter and that's good for now we've got two Fields actually we have three Fields access started us off with an ID field what's an ID field well basically that's a way of giving each record each row a unique identifier like a customer ID a product ID and so on and access will keep track of that for you using something called an auto number for now though let's just click down here and we're going to enter in some data into our table I'll type in my name Rick tab Rost and at this point it's just like Excel tab right notice the id1 went in right next to my name if I tab again I could put in Jim Kirk he's customer two and so on right John Luke pickguard and I can keep typing in customers if you want to add more Fields you can come over here pick the data type and type in a name if you want to add more records you come right down here and type in more people again just like a spreadsheet with columns that are called fields and rows that are called records now I'm done with this customer table so I'm going to close it and access says hey do you want to save changes to the design of table one we made some changes right we added first name and last name so I'm going to say yes and let's give this table a good name table one doesn't really tell me what's in that table so I'm going to type in customer t now again this is my personal naming convention I've been using this for many years I like to end all of my tables with the letter t all of my queries with Q my forms with f my reports with r and so on you don't have to do that if you don't want to a lot of people just call it customers okay don't put spaces in here also all right again very important sometimes in books you'll see TBL customer that's fine too lots of different naming conventions just pick one and try to stay consistent I like customer t now I'll hit OK my customer table is saved right there if I want to open up that customer table again and see the people in it I can double click on it and that opens up the table I can close it here if you want to create another table just go to create and then table design and I've got a whole separate lesson on how to create tables at this point I'm going to close my database and now the next time I open up Microsoft Access you should see it right here on the recent list if not you can browse to it by clicking on open over here and then again here's the recent list or click on browse and browse to wherever you put your database file open it up and there you go now the security warning is going to appear the first time you open any database this is just Microsoft's way of keeping your computer safe from viruses all you have to do since you created this database is click on enable content don't do this for databases that you got from anybody else including downloading off the web unless they're mine of course I'll click on enable content and that will go away and you shouldn't see that any other time you open this database in the future and that's it now you know how to create a basic database in Microsoft Access now of course we just scratched the surface with Microsoft Access if you want to learn more about building Microsoft Access databases tables queries forms reports that kind of stuff I have a free Microsoft access beginner level one course it's over four hours long and it covers everything you need to know to get up and running with a complete Microsoft access database you'll find the link Down Below in the description if you don't have time to sit through my four hour course I do have a condensed version on how to use Microsoft Access that covers all the basics in about 30 minutes I'll put a link to that down below as well if you enjoyed this video please give me a thumbs up and post any comments you may have below I do try to read and answer all of them as soon as I can make sure you subscribe to my channel which is completely free click the Bell icon and select all to receive notifications when 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page that will be shown on each video as long as you're a sponsor you'll get a shout out in the video and a link to your website or product in the text below the video and on my website so that's it once again my name is Richard Rost thank you for watching this video brought to you by accesslearningzone.com I hope you enjoyed I hope you learned something today live long and prosper my friends I'll see you again soon