Week 10 - Clear: Got Skills? You'll Need Them!

Mastering Access Requires An Extensive Skill Set

Hawiane Tidwell, 2012.

Although my first interaction with Access was a little over a decade ago and over the years since, I've worked with it sporatically for projects here and there and even after the refresher in this class, ISM 3004 and other computer and business courses, today I still cannot say that I am an "Access Expert" and I probably never will.  Microsoft Access is a very complex application and to master it requires a very extensive skill set as well as using the program on a regular basis.  Dr. Olson's Access Skills Track has reminded me of so much about Access that I'd forgotten which was great but also at the same time, I was reminded of so much that is still to be learned. 



Hawiane Tidwell, 2012.

Speaking of the things still left for me to learn - I did pick up some new skills and one I am really delighted about is the "Tab Stop".  Have you ever had a record with a ton of fields but you really only needed to edit a couple of them so you had to either, tab through all of them, enter through all of them, use the arrow keys, or take your hand off the keyboard so you could use the mouse to place the pointer in the next field you needed to edit?  Well, I have and let me tell you it is a productivity killer - it wastes so much time.   

Hawiane Tidwell, 2012.

Here's the simple fix!!  To restrict Access to only tab through (or only tab to) fields that you will actually edit:  In "Design View" highlight the field(s) that will not be edited.  Click "Property Sheet", on the right of the screen click the "Other" tab.  Choose "no" from the "Tab Stop" dropdown list, then press "enter".  That's it - problem solved - "tab stop" is disabled and now Access will only go to the fields that will be edited, even if it is only one (1) field.  Isn't that great!!  I think so!