Microsoft Access forms provide a quick and easy way to modify and insert records into your databases. They offer an intuitive, graphical environment easily navigated by anyone familiar with standard computer techniques. Creating a form is a quite simple, pleasant experience. Let's begin! Our goal for this tutorial is to create a simple form that will allow data entry operators in our company to easily add new customers to our sales database.

If you haven't already installed the Northwind sample database, these instructions will assist you. Otherwise, go to the Help menu, then choose Sample Databases and Northwind Sample Databases.

Note: This tutorial is for Access 2003. If you are using a later version of Microsoft Access, read our tutorial on creating form in Access 2007, Access 2010, or Access 2013.

This will bring up a list of the form objects currently stored in your database. Notice that there are a large number of pre-defined forms in this sample database. After you complete this tutorial, you might want to return to this screen and explore some of the more advanced features included in these forms.

Click on the New icon to create a new form

Next, we're presented with a variety of different methods we can use to create a form. The AutoForm options quickly create a form based upon a table or query. Design View allows for the creation and formatting of elaborate forms using Access' form editing interface. The Chart Wizard and PivotTable Wizard create forms revolving around those two Microsoft formats. In this tutorial, we'll use the Form Wizard to walk through the process step-by-step.

You can choose from any of the queries and tables in your database. If you recall our scenario, we wish to create a form to facilitate the addition of customers to our database. In order to accomplish this, we're going to select the Customers table from the pull-down menu.

Next, you'll be presented with the screen below. Use this form to select the table/query fields you wish to appear on your form. To add fields one at a time, either double-click the field name or single-click the field name and single click the ">" button. To add all the fields at once, simply click the ">>" button. The "<" and "<<" buttons work in a similar manner to remove fields from the form. For our example, we will add all of the table's fields to the form.

You can choose from either a columnar, tabular, datasheet or justified form layout. We'll use the justified layout to produce an organized form with a clean layout. You may wish to come back to this step later and explore the various layouts available.

Microsoft Access includes a number of built-in styles to give your forms an attractive appearance. Click on each of the style names to see a preview of your form and choose the one you find most appealing.

Select something easily recognizable -- this is how your form will appear in the database menu. Let's call our form "Customers" in this case. Select the next action and click Finish. You may open the form as a user will see it and begin viewing, modifying and/or entering new data. Alternatively, you may open the form in design view to make modifications to the form's appearance and properties. Let's do the latter and explore some of the options available to us.

Click the Properties icon. This will bring up a menu of user-definable attributes that apply to our form. Edit the properties as necessary. Recall that our original goal was to create a form for data entry purposes. Most likely, we don't want to grant data entry employees full access to view or edit customer records. Setting the "Data Entry" property to Yes will only allow users to insert new records and modify records created during that session.