1.                   

Open Lesson 2.5 from the Section 2 folder of your Exercise Files.

2.                   

Click the Forms object in the Database window and then double-click Customers to open the form.

Switch to Design view.

3.                   

Right-click on the Country combo box and select Properties.

When the Combo Box: Country dialog box appears, click the Data tab to see the contents.

Notice the entry in the Row Source field. The query written there is written in Structured Query Language, or SQL. Despite being a type of computer ‘language,’ it is quite intuitive and easy to read. This query does exactly like it reads: selects the distinct countries from the table of customers, therefore putting each country Northwind has sold to as entries in the combo box. Though Access takes care of the SQL for us, we will explore SQL a bit more in this manual.

4.                   

Close the Combo Box: Country dialog box.

Hold down the Shift key and select every text field (just the boxes where you would type something in, not the field labels that you modified in the last practice exercise).

5.                   

Right-click any of the selected fields and change the Fill/Back Colour to black.

Right-click any of the selected fields again and change the Font/Fore Colour to yellow.

Right-click any field one more time and pick a special effect of your choice.

6.                   

Save the form design by clicking File à Save.

7.                   

Close Microsoft Access 2003.