Understanding Other Web Table Properties

Access 2010 provides several additional web table properties that you can set in Datasheet view. To edit these properties, open in Datasheet view the Appointments web table you finished creating in the previous section. Click the Table Properties button in the Properties group on the Table contextual tab.

Access opens the Enter Table Properties dialog box. You can use the Order By property to define one or more fields that define the default display sequence of rows in this web table when in Datasheet view. If you don't define an Order By property for web tables, Access displays the rows in primary key sequence. The Filter By property lets you predefine criteria to limit the data displayed in the Datasheet view of this table.

You can use the Orientation property to specify the reading sequence of the data of your web table in Datasheet view. The default in most versions of Access is Left-to-Right. In versions that support a language that is normally read right to left, the default is Right-to-Left. When you use Right-to-Left, field and table captions appear right-justified, the field order is right to left, and the tab sequence proceeds right to left.

The Read Only When Disconnected property by default is set to No, which means you can still update or add new records to a web table that is linked to a Microsoft SharePoint Services site when you are offline.

Note: If you apply a filter or specify a sorting sequence when you have the web table open in Datasheet view, Access 2010 saves the filter in the Filter By property and the sorting sequence in the Order By property. However, Access does not use the Filter By property when you open a web table datasheet in web databases because the Filter On Load table property is set to No for web databases. To apply the filter to your datasheet, click the Toggle Filter button in the Sort & Filter group on the Home tab.