Newbee question (1 Viewer)

[cocoalex]

First of all: Hi to everyone in this forum

Now here is my problem:


I start learning Access these days and I have a little biggener problem.
It's all about the Caption Property.
I understood that I can use the Caption to store some information for the persons that will use my database. In DesingView I named a field EmployeeNumber.
When I go to see how the things are looking in DatasheetView everything looks good.
I come back to DesignView and add some text in the Caption Field : This is the Employees number. After I do that in the DatasheetView my column header for EmployeeNumber
has changed into the text I inserted in the Caption Field. From the tutorial I'm reading I understood that this was not supose to happen.

Can somebody tell me what I'm doing wrong?

 

[bjackson]

If I understand your question this is what you need to do

in the table that holds your records

1.open table in design view
2.high light the field whose caption you want to change
3.in the box at the bottom of screen select caption
4.type in the caption you want to see in data sheet view

hope this is what you wanted

 

[casey]

A caption is merely a "title" that is given to a field in case you want to name it differently on your form from what you have called the actual field in the table.

As far as, "use the Caption to store some information for the persons that will use my database.", I'm not really sure what that means.

Hope that helps.

 

[cocoalex]

It looks like I didn't explain it very well.

Bjackson I did exactly what you told me.

The problem is that after I type something inside the Caption field, what I'm typing there appears in the DesignView as the header of my column. Why is this happening???

I read that Caption it is used to offer more information about a field.

 

[belsha]

Caption problem

I think you may mean the description part of the table. If you enter information in there it will display down in the status bar area below your table, and not change the column name. Is that what you wanted to do?

 

[casey]

I don't know if I'm understanding you correctly, but what you are describing is exactly what should happen, whence you change the caption property.

What you put in the Caption property will show up in the Headings for your columns.

What is it meant for....

Say I name my table field [fldDescription]. If I want the Column Heading to show "Description" instead, I would change the caption property to "Description". Therefore, I refer to the [fldDescription] field in my table, but the Heading will be more meaningful to the users using the form.

As far as what you're reading, perhaps the article means or refers to something different. I'm not sure what it is though.

 

[cocoalex]

Casey >> So is normal what is happen???

You mean I can keep my field name (EmployeeID) in DesignView, but adding Employee Name and Number in the Caption field will change the header of my column in DatabaseView? This is what is suppose to happen?

Because this is happening. I'll read my tutorial again.

 

[belsha]

Newbee question re caption

In table design view, you can name your field name something like id_no. Then in the caption area, you can use Employee ID # and that will be the column heading when you look at the table in datasheet view. It will also carry thru to a label if you use the form wizard to create a form based on that table. In the description section of the table in design mode, you can type something like "Enter the ID number of the employee, use leading zeros if less than 7 digits" and that will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the table in datasheet view.

So, caption is used to give a more meaningful name to a field name, and definition (in a table) can be used to give more explicit information.

 

[Pat Hartman]

There is one serious downside to using the caption field. It is also used as the column name when you run a query. Since I use queries for everything, I find that I cannot use the caption field at all. A user friendly name such as Cust # is NOT what I want as a column name in a query. In this case Microsoft took the use of the caption field a little too far. It should ONLY have been used as the default label in forms and reports and NEVER as the column heading in datasheet view or in a query.