Alison Barrows

Access 2013 makes managing your data easy, combining a visual interface with the power of a relational database. Discover how to organize data into tables, design forms and reports for editing and presenting information, and create queries for selecting and combining information. The next steps are writing macros and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) scripts to make your database smart, and using SharePoint to publish data to the web.

When you’re automating an Access 2013 database application by using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), you can get lost with a blank page to begin writing code. Where do you start? Here are a few simple guidelines to follow that will have you writing VBA code like a pro: Get help. Press F1 at any time to start Microsoft Access help, where you can see examples of VBA code.

You can create an unbound form that appears when you open an Access 2013 database. Follow these steps to make your new form and the macro that will open the form automatically: Create a new form by clicking the Form Design button in the Forms group on the Create tab of the Ribbon. Access opens a form in Design view.

If you’re a user of Access 2000 through 2010, you may be familiar with Access Data Project (ADP) files — Access data files that provide access to SQL Server databases. Access 2013 drops support for the ADP format, and Microsoft recommends one of the following alternatives: Continue using the same version of Access.

Almost every Access user winds up with blank pages in a report; the blank pages appear in Print Preview. What causes these extra pages, anyway — and how do you get rid of them? Access knows the width of your paper and how much space to leave for the left and right margins because these sizes are specified in the report’s property sheet.

Want to make a brand new form in Access 2013? Here’s how — in less than ten steps — you can create and adjust your Access form to your liking: Create the form by using a wizard, adding an Application Part, or making a blank form. Decide among these options based on what you want your form to look like. You may want to run a few wizards and add a few Application Parts forms to see whether any of them looks like a good starting point for the form you want to create.

If you want to filter multiple fields in Access 2013, the flexible Filter by Form feature is what you need. Although you can apply the filters to the various fields by using several different techniques, the Filter by Form feature lets you define all your filters for the table at the same time and then see the results.

Just seeing the name of a built-in function in the third column of the Access 2013 Expression Builder doesn't tell you much. You don't know what the function does or how you use it, but you can get instant information by clicking the Help button. Follow these steps to access an Access help window: In the left column of Expression Builder, if the Functions folder has a plus sign (+) next to it, click that sign to expand the list.

Access 2013 uses the same file format as Access 2007 and Access 2010 for storing its databases, but previous versions of Access use a different format. You can tell what version a database is by opening it in Access and looking at the title bar. The title bar may display (Access 2000 file format) or (Access 2002-2003 file format) for an old format, or nothing or (Access 2007 - 2013) for the new format.