Calling one form from another form with a command button in Access 2007 2010 2013 2016 tutorial

okay when you start to make these forms and access sometimes you want to um go ahead and call one form from another form and start to create a mini application for your users so for example I have these two forms I have the orders form I'm going to double click on that and then I have this form called customers I'm going to double click on that so let's say I'm on an order well I would like to perhaps pull up that customer's information and go right to that specific customer so uh we can do that with another command button all right so let me go into the orders form and I'm going to maximize that I'm going to go into design view all right uh so this this form already has a button there's another video uh in this series where I I show you how to do that but anyway here we're going to add another button right up here and I'm going to click on the form and that's going to open up the command button wizard command button wizard is so great because uh a lot of these functions are already pre-programmed in there for you makes it a lot easier for you I want to pick on form operations and then you're going to come over here and you pick on open form so you have form operations on the left and open form on the right I'm going to pick on next there the form I want want to open is the customers form I'll pick on customers and pick on next okay this is a really important screen it says do you want the button to find specific information to display in the form for example the button can open a form in display the data for a specific employeer or a customer that's kind of what we want to do if you think about it I want to uh open up that customer uh who who made the order so I want to say open the form and find specific data to display otherwise if we picked on the bottom one when we open up that customer form it would show all of the records but I don't want to show all the records I just want to show that specific the customer so we'll click on this top one we'll pick on next now here's an equally important screen it says which Fields contain matching data the button can use to look up the information okay so in other words which record do you want to go to in this case I want to go to the record whose customer ID is the same customer ID that's on the order these are all the fields for the orders form these are all the fields for the customer form so you want to pick the common field if there's not a common field then you should cancel this process and make sure that there is a common field between the two forms it goes back to those relational Concepts relational database Concepts uh so I'm going to pick on the you pick on one field over here you pick on another field over here and then you hit the double aror and the double aror is going to call the matching Fields so the real key to this is that the two forms have a common field we're going to pick on next now it says do I want text or a picture to go on the button so I'm going to pick on text and I'm going to say uh go to current customer I like the text because you can get really specific there uh I'll pick on next and now this is asking for a name of the button I'm going to call this one the customer button you want to give them a good specific name uh for purposes later on so I'll call this one the customer button and I'll click on finish notice how there's a new button on this screen now I already have the uh run ERS report and then the customer button now what I might do is make the buttons uh the same size so I'm going to pick on this button I'm going to hold down my shift key and pick on this button now they're both selected I'm going to pick on arrange and then first of all for the arrange uh I want to uh you use some of these icons to make them uh first of all I'm going to make them align so that they're on the same horizontal plane then you see these icons over here here these make them the same size so I'm going to make them you have to see which ones are going to work for you all right so I'm going to say uh make the horizontal spacing equal all right and then uh we're going to use uh this will be fine now so at this point I'm going to run my form I'm going to pick on the design menu I'm going to say View and then form view all right so let me go to a different order let's say I'm just going to pro pro through these screens and I go through this customer now it's erst handle is the customer's name I want to pick on this button that says go to current customiz and notice how to open up the customer's window and it went right to that person's information now I can see now I can change their information if I needed to but I was able to look up their information now this even shows their order history uh so when I'm done with this screen I want to close this so maybe I would put another button here such that when I hit that it'll go back to the other screen so this come back to design view uh I'm going to put another button on this screen and click it over here now I'm going to pick on form operations but this time I just want to close the form form operations close form I'll pick on next uh the text is just going to be close form or you might say close window uh we'll pick on next and now this button should have a name I'm going to call this one the close uh button so I'll pick on finish now you see how I have a button that says closed window I'll pick on view and then form view I'm going to click on that new button that I just made and uh now it's asking me if I want to save uh yes I do want to save the forms the user would never see this by the way it's just because we haven't saved yet so I'll click on yes now we're right back to the order so I'm going to pick on goto current customer I could make my changes here when I'm done with that screen I'll pick on close window and now we're able to complete the loop so you put these buttons on to um to add add user functionality to your screen you can have as many buttons on one's form as you wanted to but it just makes it more user friendly for the system uh just remember you go back to design view for a screen pick on the design Tab and you're looking for this button right over here that's so you can uh you know kind of make a great application using these buttons