1. Assigning Required Fields and Requiring Data Entry
Some
data is more important than other data. For example, a salesperson
might need to know a contact’s phone number, but not necessarily the
contact’s address. You can tell Access 2010 to prevent someone from
moving beyond a required field without entering a value. For text and
memo fields, you can require users to enter at least one character of
text.
-
Open a table in Design view.
-
Click the field for which you want to require data entry.
-
Click in the Required property box.
-
Click the down arrow.
-
Click Yes.
Disallow Zero-Length Strings
-
Open a table in Design view.
-
Click the text or memo field for which you want to require the user to enter at least one character of text.
-
Click in the Allow Zero Length property box.
-
Click the down arrow.
-
Click No.
2. Setting Default Values
When
you enter data, you often find that you enter the same value in a field
many times. For example, most of your customers might come from the
United States, but you have a Country field for those customers outside
the United States. Setting a default value for a field saves you the
trouble of entering the expected data over and over while still allowing
you to edit the value if needed.
-
Open a table in Design view.
-
Click the field to which you want to assign the default value.
-
Type the default value in the Default Value box.
Tip
As your needs change, you should periodically review any
default values you’ve set to be sure you aren’t slowing yourself down by
deleting incorrect data.
