Matthew MacDonald - Access 2007: The Missing Manual

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You've already seen the Quick Access toolbar (known to Access nerds as the QAT). It's the micro-sized toolbar that sits above the ribbon. The Quick Access toolbar has only icons, but you can hover over a button if you want to see a label describing what it does.

When you first start out with Access, the Quick Access toolbar's a lonely place, with buttons for quickly saving the current database object and undoing or redoing the last action (.

Figure A-1. When you click the drop-down arrow on the Quick Access toolbar, Access shows a list of often-used commands that you can add just by clicking them. These commands include ones for creating a new database, opening an existing database, sending the current database object (the one that's selected in the navigation pane) to the printer with no questions asked, emailing the data from the current database object, and firing up the spell checker. But to see all your possibilities, you need to choose More Commands.

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Note: If you don't like the Quick Access toolbar's placement, Access gives you one other option. Click the drop-down arrow, and then choose Show Below the Ribbon to move your toolbar under the ribbon so your mouse has less distance to travel.

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You can add buttons to the Quick Access toolbar for two reasons:

• To make it easier to get to a command you use frequently . If it's in the Quick Access toolbar, then you don't need to memorize a keyboard shortcut or switch to a different tab in the ribbon.

• To get to a command that the ribbon doesn't provide . Access has a small set of unpopular commands that it lets you use but that it doesn't keep in the ribbon. Many of these commands are holdovers from previous versions of Access. If you have a long-lost favorite Access feature that's missing, it just may be available using the Quick Access toolbar's extra buttons. (The next section shows you how to peruse the full complement of available buttons.)

Keyboard lovers can also trigger the commands in the Quick Access toolbar with lightning speed, thanks to Access's KeyTips feature (, Alt+1 saves the currently open database object, Alt+2 triggers the Undo command, and so on.

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Tip: If you want to add a command that duplicates something that's already in the ribbon, here's a shortcut: Find the command in the ribbon, right-click it, and then choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

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To add a button to the Quick Access toolbar, follow these steps:

• Choose a category from the "Choose commands from" list .

  The library of commands that you can add to the Quick Access toolbar is enormous. To make it easier to find what you want, Access divides your choices into a collection of categories. Many of the categories overlapAccess simply provides them to make finding what you want easier. Here are the top choices: