LibreOffice-Suite-Base/C2/Enter-and-update-data-in-a-form/English
| Visual Cues | Narration |
|---|---|
| Show Slide Number 1
Spoken tutorial on LibreOffice Base: Form Data Learning Objectives Enter and update data in a form |
Welcome to the Spoken tutorial on LibreOffice Base.
In this tutorial, we will learn how to Enter and update data in a form. |
| Show Slide Number 2
Entering and Updating data |
In the last tutorial, we learnt how to add form controls to a form.
In this tutorial, let us learn how to enter data and update data using a form. Before doing this, let us make just three more modifications to our form design. |
| Open LibreOffice Base program from Windows Start-->All Programs-->LibreOffice Suite--> LibreOffice Base
Click on the 'open an existing database file' option. |
Let us first invoke the LibreOffice Base program, if it is not already open<pause>
And open our Library database by clicking Open under File menu. |
| In the Base main window,
Right click on the form 'Books Issued to Members', and click edit. |
Now we are in the Library database.
And, we will open the 'Books Issued to Members' form. To do this, let us click on the Forms icon on the left panel and then right click on the 'Books Issued to Members' form on the right panel, and then click on Edit. We are now in the form design window. |
| Resize the form so that it looks as big as the form in the reference image BookIssueForm1stViewScript6.JPG | Here, let us first, resize the form, so it looks compact and less imposing.
To do this, we will decrease the height and length of our form window. We will do this by clicking, dragging and dropping on the top and sides of the form window. |
| Highlight the top most heading
text, using mouse click and drag, To change font, highlight this text, choose Arial Black and Size 12 in the Formatting toolbar. |
Next, let us change the font of the heading on our form.
Let us change the font to Arial Black and Size 12 from the Formatting toolbar at the top <pause> |
| Show Slide Number 3
Tab Order in a Form
|
Finally, let us look at the Tab Order of the form controls.
This helps us to use keyboard tab keys to navigate across the form controls in a particular order, Say for example from the top to the bottom. This is called the tab order. Now, Base automatically sets the tab order of the form controls from top to bottom in a form. But since we removed a couple of text boxes, and added two new list boxes and four buttons, we may have mixed up the tab order. So, we will set it right now. |
| Go to the View menu on the top, then click on toolbars, and check against the Form Design toolbar. If already checked, leave it as is.
In the Form Design toolbar found in the bottom of the window, point over icons and go to the 7th. Click on this icon with tooltip that says Activation order. |
In the Form Design toolbar, usually found at the bottom of the window, we will browse through the icons;
And find the icon with the tooltip that says 'Activation order'. Let us click on this icon. |
| In the Tab Order popup, order the items using Move up and move down buttons. The order needs to be as follows from top to bottom.
fmtIssueId, List Box 1 List Box 2 datIssueDate datReturnDate datActualReturnDate CheckedIn and then the Push buttons 1, 2, 3 and 4. Click on Ok button |
Now, we see a small popup window with 'Tab Order' as its title.
To order these form controls, we can either, click, drag and drop the items Or we can use the 'Move up', or 'Move down' buttons. So let us set the tab order as shown in the image here. <pause> We are done, so let us click on the Ok button to save these changes. |
| Press Control S.
Close the window. |
Okay, now, let us save our form, by press Control S
And then we will close the form window. And finally, we are done with our Form design. Now, let us test our form. |
| In the Base main window,
double click on the form 'Books Issued to Members', We should see a form with a blue background. Shoe cursor movement as narration goes forward. Point cursor over titles and member list boxes Point cursor over ‘An autobiography’ And ‘Nisha Sharma’ Point mouse over the rest of the fields Move mouse over the Form Navigation toolbar at the bottom of the window. Click on the Last Record icon. Type in 2 in the Record number text box in and press enter. Point cursor over name and book title. Type 7/7/11 in the Actual Return Date, Check the checkbox. Click on Save Record button on the form. Point cursor over save button. |
In the main Base window, let us open the 'Books Issued to Members' form by double-clicking on it.
Now the form is open in data entry mode. Notice the heading that says 'Form to track Books issued to Members' And here we see book titles and member names instead of bookIds and memberIds. Also, this is the first record of the BooksIssued Table; we see that 'An Autobiography' is highlighted against the book title And 'Nisha Sharma' highlighted against the Member name, And we also see the rest of the fields. Now we can traverse through all the records by using the Form Navigation toolbar icons at the bottom. <pause> Let us go to the second record now. Here we see that the member Jacob Robin has borrowed the book 'Macbeth', and let us assume now that he is returning the book. So let us, update this information into this record. For this, we will type in the actual return date, for example 7/7/11 And check the Checked In field. To save this information, we will press the 'Save Record' button that we put there. Notice that the button is greyed out, meaning now it is disabled from use. But if we edit this record again, then the button gets enabled again. |
| Click on the book title 'Conquest of Self' and then type in 5/7/11 in the Actual Return Date field
Point cursor over Save and Undo buttons Click on the 'Undo Changes' button. Show cursor movement over the list boxes as narration goes forward. |
Okay, now let us test the 'Undo changes' button.
For this, let us edit the record by clicking on the book title 'Conquest of Self' and then typing in 5/7/11 in the Actual Return Date field. Notice that both the 'Save record' button and the 'Undo changes' button are enabled for use. Now, let us click on the 'Undo Changes' button, and see what happens. The changes we did last have been undone. Notice that 'Macbeth' is highlighted instead of 'Conquest of Self' and the Actual return date is 7/7/11. |
| Click on the 'Delete Record'
Click on Yes in the popup window. |
Good, let us now click on the 'Delete Record' button, meaning, we are trying to delete this second record.
Base is cautious about deletes, so it asks for a confirmation by alerting us. For now, let us go ahead and click on the 'Yes' button, We can see that the record is indeed deleted; gone from the screen and in its place we see the next record. |
| Click on New Record button. | Finally, let us add a new record by clicking on the last button on the form which is 'New record'. |
| Point on Issue Id text box,
Click on 'Merchant of Venice', Click on Ravi Kumar, type in 5/7/11 against Issue Date, type in 5/8/11 against the Return date. Click on Save Record button. |
Let us type some values.
Since the IssueId is an auto generating field, we will skip it, And here let us add data as as shown in the image.<pause> To save the entries, click on the Save Record button. There we go. We have tested the form by entering and updating data. |
| Show Slide Number 4
Assignment: Design a form to show data from the Members table. Form needs to look compact. Make the fonts bold. Add a Save and New record button. |
Here is an assignment.
Design a form to show the members information. Make the form look compact. Make the fonts bold. Add Save and New record buttons. |
| Show Slide Number 5
Summary Enter and update data in a form. |
This brings us to the end of this tutorial on Form Data in LibreOffice Base
To summarize, we learned how to: Enter and update data in a form. |
| Acknowledgement Slide | Spoken Tutorial Project is a part of the Talk to a Teacher project, supported by the National Mission on Education through ICT, MHRD, Government of India. This project is co-ordinated by http://spoken-tutorial.org. More information on the same is available at the following link http://spoken-tutorial.org/NMEICT-Intro. This script has been contributed by Priya Suresh,DesiCrew Solutions Pvt Ltd.Thanks for joining. |
