Guide to the Access 2007 user interface 1

Overview

The new user interface in Office Access 2007 comprises a number of elements that define how you interact with the product. These new elements were chosen to help you master Access, and to help you find the commands that you need faster. The new design also makes it easy to discover features that otherwise might have remained hidden beneath layers of toolbars and menus. And you will get up and running faster, thanks to the new Getting Started with Microsoft Office Access page, which provides you with quick access to our new getting started experience, including a suite of professionally designed templates.

The most significant new interface element is called the Ribbon, which is part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface. The Ribbon is the strip across the top of the program window that contains groups of commands. The Office Fluent Ribbon provides a single home for commands and is the primary replacement for menus and toolbars. On the Ribbon are tabs that combine commands in ways that make sense. In Office Access 2007, the main Ribbon tabs are Home, Create, External Data, and Database Tools. Each tab contains groups of related commands, and these groups surface some of the additional new UI elements, such as the gallery, which is a new type of control that presents choices visually.

The major new interface elements in Office Access 2007 are:

• Getting Started with Microsoft Office Access The page that is displayed when you start Access from the Windows Start button or from a desktop shortcut.
• The Office Fluent Ribbon The area at the top of the program window where you can choose commands.
  • Command tab Commands combined in ways that make sense.
  • Contextual command tab A command tab that appears depending on your context — the object that you are working on or the task that you are performing.
  • Gallery A control that displays a choice visually so that you can see the results that you will get.
  • Quick Access Toolbar A single standard toolbar that appears on the Ribbon and offers single-click access to most needed commands, such as Save and Undo.
• Navigation Pane The area on the left side of the window that displays your database objects. The Navigation Pane replaces the Database window from earlier versions of Access.
• Tabbed documents Your tables, queries, forms, reports, pages, and macros are displayed as tabbed documents.
• Status bar The bar at the bottom of the program window that displays status information and includes buttons that allow you to change your view.
• Mini toolbar An on-object element that transparently appears above text that you have selected, so that you can easily apply formatting to the text.

Information From http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/HA100398921033.aspx