LibreOffice-Suite-Base/C2/Enter-and-update-data-in-a-form/English

From Script | Spoken-Tutorial
Revision as of 14:26, 25 June 2014 by PoojaMoolya (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search
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.
Show Slide Number 2

Entering and Updating data

In this tutorial, we will learn how to
Open LibreOffice Base program from Windows Start-->All Programs-->LibreOffice Suite--> LibreOffice Base

Click on the 'open an existing database file' option.

Enter and update data in a form.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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>
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Finally, let us add a new record by clicking on the last button on the form which is 'New record'.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Contributors and Content Editors

Chandrika, PoojaMoolya