The database Navigation Pane

- [Instructor] The navigation pane on the left side of the Access interface serves as the table of contents for your database. It displays all of the objects, the tables, queries, forms, and reports that make up the database's structure. And it also allows you to filter and search through those objects to get to the one that you're looking for quickly. I've gone ahead and pulled up a copy of the Red30 Tech database that has a number of objects already created. So you can see what the navigation pane looks like when it's chock-full of content. Now it starts out a little bit too narrow for my tastes. So I'm going to click here and get this double-headed arrow, and then I can drag to make it wider. Right now the navigation pane is in its default configuration where all of the objects are grouped together based on their type. You'll see, I have a header for tables, and there is all my tables. Then I have queries, and all of the queries. Then I have forms, and if I scroll down, I'll see some report objects. Each of these headers has an up and down arrow to the right side of it. If you click the up arrow, it'll collapse the header and collapse all of the objects within it. Then when I want to work on my forms, I can expand that section, and there are my forms. When I'm done working with those, I can collapse it and move on to tables, for example. This keeps everything nice and clean on the screen. At the very top, I have a search box that allows me to quickly find specific objects. For instance, if I do a search for the word customer, Access will reveal all of the items that have the word customer in their name. And you can see I have a number of tables, queries, forms, and reports that all have that word. To get rid of the filter, click on this icon over here to clear the search string. That'll reveal all the objects in my database once again. At the top of the navigation pane, there's a dropdown menu that allows us to change the configuration of the window. This menu is split into two different parts. The top part says Navigate To Category. Now I personally think this should simply be labeled Grouping because that's exactly what this is doing. Right now, we're grouping all of our objects based off of their type. That's what gives me these categories for tables, queries, forms, and reports. Alternatively, we can choose to group our objects based off of their modified date or the date they were created, or by tables and related views. The bottom half of this menu says Filter By Group. Here, we can choose to display only a single object type. Right now, it says All Access Objects. So that's why I'm seeing all of my tables, queries, forms, and reports, but I can filter this down to just show me a single type. For instance, if I select queries, then navigation pane will only show me queries. You'll notice that the name of the top of the navigation pane has changed now. I'll go back into that menu and switch it back to All Access Objects. There's also a right click menu in the top of the navigation pane. Where it says All Access Objects or whatever your title is, right click, and you'll see some additional options. We can get to the same grouping options under the Category label, or change the way that things sort. We can also change the way the icons display. Go into the View By, and right now, we'll see that we're seeing the items as a list. And that's what gives them this kind of compact icon right here. If I switch this to Icon, you'll see that everything gets a much larger icon. And if I go back into that right click menu and choose View By and Details, you'll see that I get some additional details about each object, including the creation and modified dates. Now this tends to spread things out quite a bit. And if you have a lot of objects, you find you have a lot more scrolling that you'll need to do in order to go through all of them. I tend to prefer the compact arrangement. So I'll right click, go to View By and change it back to List. Finally, if you need more working space for the main area of the Access interface to the right, you can collapse the navigation pane altogether with the shutter bar open/close button up here. When you click it, the navigation pane will minimize to the left-hand side of your screen. That'll give you more space to work. Then when you want to get back into it, just go over here and reclick that shutter bar button. One of the most useful keyboard shortcuts in all of Access is the F11 key. When you press it, it'll collapse and reveal the navigation pane. Using F11, you can quickly open up the panel when you need it, and then get it off the screen to have more room to work. So that's the navigation pane. It's the central hub of the entire database. Getting around your objects using the navigation pane is really easy. And with so many options to group, sort and filter your objects to meet your exact needs, it means that you can be moving around from object to object in the most efficient manner possible.