Once we get our data in a table we often want to sort it in different ways or filter it to select just certain records. I'm going to show you those features as soon as I add some more customers and I'm going to show you a short cut for entering data.

Now I've changed the existing records to six character customer IDs and now we click in a new record and type the customer ID. Then we tab to the last name field. This customer has the same last name as the one above. To copy data from the same field in the previous record we just hold control and press the apostrophe key. And then we’re ready for the next field. It’s that easy. Now I will finish this record and add the rest of our costumers to the table.

There that’s the last customer record. We fit the last name and the first name columns to the new data. Now we’ll do some sorting, access has two sort buttons on the toolbar. One sorts in ascending order from A to Z and from low numbers to high numbers. The other sorts in descending order, for example if we want to group customers by area code or we can just sort by phone number.

We click anywhere in that column and then click on the sort ascending button. To sort an ascending order by customer ID we click in that column and click on the sort button. Sometimes we want to see certain records, just to seal the customer. Well, one way to do that is to apply filter to the table. To display just the records to seal the customers we first select the COD field that’s check. Then we use the filter by selection button which will display only the records that match what we've selected.

There is also an apply filter button which we’ll use in just a minute. And when we click on filter by selection, the filter is created and applied. It selects the matching records and displays them. The apply filter button is now a remove filter button. And when we click on it the filter is removed. This button will alternately apply and remove the filter. Now we’re done with this table for now, so we close it by clicking on a close button. Access, access if want to save design changes and we click on yes.

The table displays as an object in the data base window. The filter we created is saved with the table that is until we create another filter by selection. There are other kinds of filters you can create and you could also select records with queries, which you'll see later.