Input forms and output reports

Manually adding data and index numbers to your tables can get tiresome for hundreds of entries across dozens of tables. Thankfully for data entry you can create custom input forms that hide auto-numbering indexes, so you can focus on adding stuff like the title of a book and its author.

To create one, head to the Forms tab and click “Use Wizard to Create Form...”. From here you can select all fields from the Books table apart from BookID, check the Add subform box and then add every single field in the Authors table. In the fourth step you should link the AuthorID field between the two tables, then select how to lay them out. Leave the remaining steps as their default values. After you click Finish press the arrows in the bottom-left corner of the form window to navigate through existing records and find a new blank one for you to fill in.

Finally, to output data into a printable document head to the Reports tab and run that wizard. From here you can use the UnreadBooks query you made earlier and select all of the fields. You can customise how the labels should look, choose the final template and use the Grouping and Sorting steps to lay out the page according to author, genre or nationality. Then click Finish to see the final Writer file.