It is very important that you plan your table design in accordance with the table’s intended purpose. This sounds too obvious – and it is, which is why it is so often overlooked. Think in terms of the information you will want to be able to extract from the table in a week's time, a month's time, and a year's time.
If it is likely that you will not be the only user of the table, talk to others who may be expected to produce useful, efficient work with your design. They may operate in slightly different ways to you and their experience will be a useful supplement to your own. Basically, a clear idea of the potential functions of your database should guide you in its design.
It is recommended that you sketch out the design for your table on paper, in row and column layout, with field names at the head of each column. Pencil in a few rows of data to confirm that you have made allowance for all the relevant data items you need. If not, just add some more columns and field names in a second sketch, and repeat the process until you have established fields for all required data items.
Consider also, at this point, the order of the columns. If you have a large number of fields, it is usually better to keep all the most commonly accessed columns to the left of the layout. In this way you will minimize the need to scroll the table window left and right to enter, edit or view your most important data. You will however be using Query files to see many different views of your data, each with only the columns you want, arranged in the order you require for a particular purpose.
Once you are satisfied with the overall layout of your table, and have allocated meaningful field names to your columns, you need to determine the properties of each field. Typically these will include the type of data that a field is to contain, such as text or numbers; whether the records in your table are to contain any default data; the width of the fields; and so on.