Part I: Access Building Blocks
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Number/Currency data entry with data validation
The CreditLimit field in tblContacts has a validation rule assigned to it. It has a
Validation Rule property to limit the amount of credit to $250,000. If the rule is violated, a
dialog box appears with the validation text entered for the field. If you want to allow a contact to
have more than $250,000 credit, change the validation rule in the table design.The exact currency character used by Access (in this case, the dollar sign) is determined by the
regional options set in the Control Panel’s Regional Settings.OLE object data entry
You can enter OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) Object data into a datasheet, even though
you don’t see the object. An OLE Object field holds many different item types, including:l (^) Bitmap pictures
l Sound files
l (^) Business graphs
l Word or Excel files
Any object that an OLE server supports can be stored in an Access OLE Object field. OLE objects
are generally entered into a form so you can see, hear, or use the value. When OLE objects appear
in datasheets, you see text that tells what the object is (for example, you may see Bitmap Image in
the OLE Object field). You can enter OLE objects into a field in two ways:
l (^) Pasting from the Clipboard
l Right-clicking on the OLE Object field and clicking on Insert Object from the pop-up
menu
Memo field data entry
The second-to-last field in the table is Notes, which is a Memo data type. This type of field allows
up to 65,536 characters of text for each field. Recall that you entered a long string (about 260 char-
acters) into the Memo field. As you entered the string, however, you saw only a few characters at a
time — the rest of the string scrolled out of sight. Pressing Shift+F2 displays a Zoom window with
a scroll bar (see Figure 6.8) that lets you to see more characters at a time. Click the Font button at
the bottom of the window to view all the text in a different font or size. (The font in Figure 6.8 has
been enlarged considerably over the 8-point default font size for the Zoom window.)
When you first display text in the Zoom window, all the text is selected and highlighted. You can
deselect the text by clicking anywhere in the window. If you accidentally delete all the text or
change something you didn’t want to, click Cancel to exit back to the datasheet with the field’s
original data.
Tip
Use the Zoom window (Shift+F2) when designing Access objects (tables, forms, reports, queries) to see text
that normally scrolls out of view.