Custom menu bar
Today I'll demonstrate how to create a menu bar, step by step, to give a more professional and just give access to options that really matter to the end user of a project in Access.
At the end we will have a menu bar that looks like the image below.
1 - Go to the Tools menu and choose 'customize'. The following menu appears:
2 - Choose the tab 'Toolbars' and choose 'New' and enter the name you want to give to the toolbar, I chose "menu". Click OK and appears on the toolbar which will work, which for now has no options.
3 - With the selected toolbar click 'properties' and the following menu appears:
4 - Change the 'Type' to 'Toolbar' and then click Close.
5 - Click on the 'commands' and the list on the left that says 'categories' choose 'new menu' which should be in last position. Then click the box on the right 'commands' and drag 'new menu' up on our menu bar as exemplified by the image below.
Drag 'new menu' up on our menu bar, the times required by the number of menus that we need in this example I will drag three times to make two menus and submenus. To make a submenu simply drag 'new menu into a menu. Note: The number of menus can be changed later, you can add or decrease by as you need.
6 - Clicking the right button of mouse on top of 'new menu' of our toolbar and change the name as desired. In the example I chose 'Customers' for the 1st and 'suppliers' for the 2nd.
7 - Now let's put menus in forms that we intend to open. Click on the 'Commands' and choose the category 'All forms' and on the right side will show all existing form in the current project. Click the form you want and drag the tool bar. In the example I chose various forms and reports and also the option EXIT (to close Access). At this stage we can choose what we want our toolbar open you just have to choose what we want in the categories (tables, forms, reports, queries, Access action menus that appear as the menu bar by default, etc.).
8 - After choosing everything you want to have on our menu bar you can click on each one with the right mouse button to see the properties that can change. See the image below.
'Reset' - serves to put an item was originally before you change the name of the image, etc..
'Delete' - delete a menu item
'Name' - to change the name of the menu item. Here we can also set the shortcut to that item using the ampersand before the letter you want to use as a shortcut. For example, the Exit option by default is already well & xit the menu appears the letter 'r' underlined that tells us that when using the ALT key + r runs the Exit menu item. In the example I chose to open Clients & Client with the shortcut ALT + C.
'Copy / paste / reset / edit / change the button image' - these commands are used to work exactly the image we want to see next to each item. We can copy and paste the image to use in another item, restore the original image, edit the image and make an icon editor (pixel by pixel) or choose a picture available on the menu change.
Then we can also choose the aspect of the item, ie if we want text only or text and image.
'Start a group "- serves to separate items by a horizontal bar, or create groups of items.
"Link grant" - to assign a link to either a URL or any object in the database.
'Properties' - shows all the properties of the item.
9 - Now that we have the menu bar we have ready to put in place. To do this click on the close button and drag our menu to the top of the screen until you paste it to where the bar is the default Access.
10 - To start the bar to open the database have to give the instruction to open when you start Access. Let the 'Tools' and 'Start' and 'Menu Bar' choose the name of our menu in this example 'menu'.
11 - To change the images of each menu items we can use another way is to insert an image into the same form and copy for the item. That is:
- Create a form in the form of structure
- Go to the Insert menu and choose the image
- Choose any image and hit enter
- Select the image and with the right mouse button choose Copy
- Go to the Tools menu and choose the option to customize
- Click the right button of mouse on the item you wish to change the image and choose Paste Button Image.
- Click close and close Access
- Start the database to see the outcome
IMPORTANT NOTE: When changing the menu bar, the menu disappear in the Access database, it is done. To make changes in it is necessary to start the database down the SHIFT key.
My menu looks like this:
Download: Menu Bar
Congratulations on the site, very useful and quite instructive.
As for the menu, it would have to be done at each station using the database?
If the database on a network, yes ... or you can simply make a database and then copy the database for each site, ie if there are differences between stations in the bank.
Friend, the images are not appearing.
Friend, the images do not appear.
I can not do this in access 2007, he different, as I do in 2007?
I've never worked with Access 2007, but if you search on google should not be some who do know.
I wonder how when you do not have access microsoft office but BrOffice?
Congratulations on the Blog have been following and I have learned many things can
Thanks and good job
great article. My question is after you enter the custom toolbar, and proceed to open a form and close the others who have also opened and or reports, or open only the report that I click on the menu, then choose another report when the menu, then automatically closes the previous one, your macro course. Its?
Thank you.