From the course: Access 2016: Advanced Tips and Tricks

Hide tables and other objects

From the course: Access 2016: Advanced Tips and Tricks

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Hide tables and other objects

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- [Voiceover] We've cleaned up our navigation pane a bit by embedding objects wherever possible. That might still leave a few objects that are necessary in the functionality of the database, but that we don't want our end users getting to. For instance, it's often advisable to keep people out of the underlying data tables in your database, and only allow them to view the information through a form or a report that controls what they can do with the records. We can get some degree of protection by hiding the objects that they definitely don't need to have access to. Now there's a couple of different ways that we can hide objects over here in the navigation pane. One way is to right click on an object, for instance, I'll right click on this Customers table here and choose Hide in this Group from the pop up menu. And you'll notice that it disappears from the tables group. Another way to do it is to right click on an object, for instance, I'll right click on this Employees table, and come down to Table Properties. Inside of the Properties sheet we have an attribute here for Hidden, and I can put a check mark here and say Apply and then OK, and notice that it too disappears from the tables group. Now while the effect is the same that both of those objects are now hidden or removed from my navigation pane, the result is actually quite different. Let's go up here to the Create tab and we'll start a new query in design view and I'll show you what I mean. Notice in the Show Table window that I have access to the original Customers table, but I don't see the Employees table. Hiding an object directly keeps it available in the design environments while choosing the Hidden option in the object's properties removes its appearance from the object design tools as well. Now even though it doesn't appear, all the existing forms, reports and queries that use the Employees table will still function properly. Let's go ahead and close the Show Table window and we'll exit out of this query. In order to get objects back that you've previously hidden, come down into the navigation pane into the blank area down here at the bottom, right click, and go into Navigation Options. On the very bottom of the Options screen we have this check box here that says Show Hidden Objects. Go ahead and turn that on and press OK. Now we can see a ghosted view of both the Customers table and the Employees table here. We can either work with them in this way or we can unhide them. In order to unhide them, we just have to reverse the process that we did the first time around. For the Customers table, I'll right click on it, and choose Unhide in this Group. And for the Employees table, I'll right click on it, and notice that we can't unhide from this group here, but I can go to Table Properties and turn off the Hidden check box here. I'll press Apply, and then OK, and that becomes unhidden as well. Then we'll come back into those navigation options, and we'll turn off the option to show hidden objects. So there's two ways to hide objects in your database. By using the simple right click menu, you can remove objects from the navigation pane while still keeping them visible in the design tools, or by going through the Properties window you can remove them from both the navigation pane and any deign tools all at once.

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