Set startup options

- [Narrator] To give your database a polished appearance consider setting some of the start up options. Let's take a look and see what's available by going to the file tab and then clicking on options. From there we'll switch over to the current database and the first option I want to look at is this application title. This will replace what appears at the very top of our screen. We'll simplify this by typing in Landon Hotel Database. (typing) Below that we can tell Access to automatically open up a specific form which will allow your users to get right to work without having to first dig through the navigation pane.

I'm gonna choose to open up the check-in guest form automatically. If you dislike using the layout view to edit your objects and just want to stick with the full design tools, then you can completely remove that as an option. Just uncheck the enable layout view button right down here. You can also prevent changes to your tables from happening in datasheet view which is an option that I almost always enable. Let's go ahead and turn that off as well. This can protect the structure of your tables by requiring all changes to be made in the full design mode and can keep people from accidentally adding columns or renaming columns with a stray click of the data sheet.

One of the options that I really like is the display navigation pane checkbox. We can find it by scrolling down just a little bit further right here. If you turn this off it keeps the navigation pane from displaying on the screen. Of course this will require that your database is structured in a way that all of your required tasks can be accomplished to the use of well organized forums and navigation controls. But if that's the case turning off the navigation pane can keep other users away from objects that they shouldn't be messing with. And if you really want to keep people from messing with completed database structures, you could turn off the allow full menus option.

We can find that in the ribbon and toolbar options group. This will only leave the home tab and the custom tabs you may have created in the print preview tabs available for people to use. Once you've made your selection, go ahead and press the ok button and we'll get this message that says we must close and reopen the current database for this specified options to take effect. Let's go ahead and say ok to that. And then I'll close the database. And we'll open it up again. Now we can see we have a much cleaner interface. It just says Landon Hotel across the top. Our check-in guest form automatically opened up.

Our navigation pane is completely missing from the screen and our ribbon interface has been reduced to just the home tab. Now I should point out that the navigation pane isn't completely gone. You can bring it back by pressing the F11 shortcut key. Also we can bypass all these customizations to the startup process by holding down the shift key on your keyboard while opening up the database file. Let's try it out by closing out the database, coming back to the Windows Explorer, I'll hold down the shift key and double click on the startup options file.

Once Access opens up in the background we can go ahead and click on its window. And we'll see that our navigation pane is back, the form isn't open and all of our tabs are back across the top. So by holding down that shift key when you open the database file, there's not gonna be any fear of accidentally locking yourself out. So once your database is fully developed and it's time to get down to the day to day management of your data, entering records and printing reports, it's a good idea to limit the amount of exposure that you give to the design tools. They'll still be there when you want to make structural changes to the database, but they're really not required for general operational tasks.

It's safer if you keep them off the screen to keep everyone including yourself from accidentally breaking something that you've worked so hard to perfect.