LibreOffice-Suite-Base/C2/Modify-a-simple-form/English
| Visual Cues | Narration |
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Spoken tutorial on LibreOffice Base: Modifying a Form Learning Objectives
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Welcome to the Spoken tutorial on LibreOffice Base.
In this tutorial on Modifying a Form, we will learn how to
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| Show Slide Number 2
Enter data in a form. |
In the previous tutorial, we learnt to create a form using LibreOffice Base.
We created a simple Books data entry form in our example Library database. Let us see how we can enter data into the Books table, using this form. |
| Open LibreOffice Base program from Windows Start-->All Programs-->LibreOffice Suite--> LibreOffice Base
Click on the 'open an existing database file' option. In the 'Recently Used' drop down box, Library should be visible, now click on the Finish button. |
Let us first invoke the LibreOffice Base program, if it is not already open<pause>
And open our Library database. If Base is already open, then we can open the Library database from here by clicking the Open inside the File menu or by clicking the Recent Documents inside the File menu |
| Click on the Forms icon in the Database list on the left panel.
Right click on 'Books Data entry form' and browse through list slowly. Click on open. Show cursor movement on the window, as narration goes forward. Click on tab keys slowly Click on the black triangle icons in the bottom toolbar slowly. Type in 4 in the textbox in the bottom toolbar and press enter/tab. Click on last record icon in the bottom toolbar.
Show cursor over the empty text boxes. Type in 'Paradise Lost' in the text box right of the label 'Title', tab key once, Type in 'John Milton' against author, tab key once, Type in '1975' against PublishYear, tab key once, Type in 'Oxford' against Publisher, tab key once, Type in 200 against price. Go to File menu>>Close. Go to the LibreOffice Base main window, double click on Books table on the right. Point on the last record here. Show cursor movement. Close window. |
Now we are in the Library Database.
Let us click on the Forms icon in the Database list on the left panel. Notice that the 'Books Data entry form' under Forms is highlighted in the centre of this window. Let us right click on this form name and click on Open. Now, we see a new window with a blue background with labels Now we are in the Library Database. Let us click on the Forms icon in the Database list on the left panel. Notice that the 'Books Data entry form' under Forms is highlighted in the centre of this window. Let us right click on this form name and click on Open. Now, we see a new window with a blue background with labels and text boxes corresponding to the fields in the Books table. Let us click on the tab key to go to each field, and as we go to the last, Base opens the next record. This way we can traverse the records. Or we can also use the black triangle icons in the bottom toolbar to navigate among the records. Alternately, to simply go to a particular record, type in the record number in the bottom toolbar and press enter key or the tab key. Let us go to the last record which is the fifth. Now let us add a new record. To do this, click on the New Record icon, that is second right of the Last record icon in the bottom toolbar. Notice that we see empty text boxes and the record number at the bottom says 6. Now we are ready to add a new record, with information about a new book. Let us type in 'Paradise Lost' in the Title text box, and let us use tab key to navigate to the next field, Let us type in 'John Milton' against author '1975' against PublishYear 'Oxford' against Publisher and 200 against price. There, we have just entered a new record into the Books table by using the Books Data Entry Form. We will close this window. We can add more records or data in this way. Let us see if Base has updated the Books table with the last record we entered just now. For this, in the LibreOffice Base main window, let us double click on Books table on the right panel Notice the new record that we entered through the form here. Okay, we will close this window now. |
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In the main window, click on the Forms icon in the database list on the left panel. Right click on 'Books Data Entry form', click on edit. |
Next, let us now learn how to make simple modifications to our form.
We will click on the Forms icon in the database list on the left panel. And open the 'Books Data Entry form' for modifying, by right - clicking on it and then choosing 'edit'. |
| Click on the label 'title'. Move cursor to the various small green boxes.
Show cursor over labels and text boxes. Double-click on the label title to open small popupwindow. Scroll by using down arrow slowly till the end. Click on the label 'author' in the form. |
A familiar window opens now,
Except that if you click on the label 'title', you will see several small green boxes enclosing the label and the text box. This means that we are in the form design window And we can modify the look and feel of the form, and its elements as well as its functionalities. For example, we can change the placement and size of the labels and text boxes. These are also called properties. Double-click on the label title. This opens a smaller popup window called Properties. Notice the various elements here.<pause> Now let us click on the label 'author', notice that the Properties window refreshes and shows the properties of label Author. So as we click on various elements on the form, we see that the Properties window refreshes to show the selected element's properties. |
| Show cursor over properties window title
Right click on Title label, and click on 'Group' toward the bottom and click on 'Ungroup'. Click on price label. Click on title label. |
Now, the Properties window title reads as Properties:MultiSelection.
This is because we see that the author label and its textbox adjacent to it, are encased in one set of green boxes. Base automatically has grouped the labels and corresponding textboxes in the form. We can ungroup them. Right click on the Title label, then click on 'Group' at the bottom and then click on 'Ungroup'. Now we see that the label title and its text box have been ungrouped. In this way, we can modify the properties of individual elements on the form. |
| Double click on the title text box.
Scroll to the bottom and against 'Help text' type in 'Enter the title of the book here' Save the form by using Save icon below the File menu. Close this window. |
Next, let us add a tool tip to the title text box.
Now let us scroll to the bottom in the Properties window. Notice the label 'Help text' and here, let us type in 'Enter the title of the book here' Now, let us save the form by clicking on the Save icon below the File menu on the top. And we will close this window. |
| Go to the Base main window,
Click on the Forms icon on the left, Double-click on 'Books Data Entry Form'. Point mouse over title label to show the tool tip. |
Let us now see, how our form looks like after the modification that we made.
For this, let us go to the Base main window, click on the Forms icon on the left panel, And double-click on 'Books Data Entry Form' on the right panel. Let us point the mouse over the title label or the text box. Notice that a tooltip appears saying 'Enter the title of the book here'. So now, we have learnt how to make a simple modification to our form. We will see how to make more modifications to a form in the next part of the Base tutorial. |
| Show Slide Number 3
Assignment: Create a simple form for Members table. |
Here is an assignment.
Create a simple form for the Members table. |
| Show Slide Number 4
Summary
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This brings us to the end of this tutorial on Modifying a Form in LibreOffice Base.
To summarize, we learned:
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| 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. Signing off. Thanks for joining. |
