Add New Field

A very nice feature in Access 2007 is the new "Add New Field" column in table datasheet view. You can see it here.

This is a column that is similar to the New Row also featured at the bottom of table datasheets. The difference is that you can use this column to add new columns by simply typing in data. Depending on what data you key in (e.g. 1/1/2005, $10.00, etc), the type of the data will figured out for you.

Of course, as with any guesswork, there is margin for error. Or you may simply want to change the datatype to something more specific. For that matter, we allow you to change the datatype of columns directly from the ribbon, still while in datasheet view. You can see it here on the Datasheet contextual tab, in the "Data Type and Formatting" chunk.

What this means is that the need to go to design mode is greatly reduced and specific around a couple of scenarios (such as setting the index/indices) and such.

Another interesting benefit is that we now have some very good support to pasting data into a datasheet, particularly Excel. We'll try to guess the types and column names.