Microsoft Access Tutorial - How to Create Documentation for Tables

With Microsoft Access you can create documentation for the table that you are using in your database. For this reading the table I will use is called "People".

1. Open Microsoft Access

Open Access and open the database for which you would like to create documentation on.

2. Click on Tools -> Analyze -> Documenter

When you hover your mouse over Analyze, there will be 3 choices, select "Documenter'. A window called "Documenter" will open and you can select the tables out of all the available tables in your Access database for documenting.

3. Select Tables

Check mark the tables you would like to create documentation for. For my example I will check mark the table called "People" and then click OK. This will generate the documentation for that particular table.

Notice that in the window where you pressed OK, there was also a button called "Options". You can go back and click that button and select options that you would like to change and customize when it comes to how the documentation will look or what information will get documented. For this tutorial, I will use the default documentation settings.

The main groupings of the documentation are properties of the fields. The properties section has information such as the date that the database and table was created, the last modified date, and other relevant information which gets displayed in the header of the documentation.

The columns section has information of all of the fields in the table and a description for each field. When you're designing an overall architecture for your database, it can be a good thing to create the documentation for individual tables and get an overall picture of what is contained in that table so that the design process will become easier.

The Microsoft Access Documenter information will be opened a window called "Object Definition". If you right-click anywhere on the window you can click on export to save this documentation. In the window that pops up you can choose to save it is an Access database or an Excelfile or a text file or a web page or one of many other choices for what format you want to save your documentation. After you click on export you will be able to view this documentation using whatever method you used to export the file.

If you wanted to take a look at the table and what's available on the table like the different fields, what kind of information that can be stored in a field, you can use this documentation technique that is built-in to Microsoft Access and can be used for any table in your database.