Access or Excel?

[mnature]

SAMS Teach Yourself Microsoft Office Access 2003 in 24 Hours is an adequate
introduction to Access. Less than 600 pages, deals with various topics one
at a time, and allows you to do some hands-on activities. It is only about
$25.

One of the problems of going from Excel to Access is that most people try to
make Access look just like Excel. It sounds like you have gotten very good
at Excel. You can get good at Access, too, but it is an entirely different
way of looking at data.

 

[John Kitchens]

Hello I am currently using Excel 2000, but I think I should start using
Access. I have Access 2000, but I have never used it.

In Excel I have a form that I made that is used to produce scale tickets for
a recycling yard. Through the use of macros and combo boxes etc, the user
can enter the customer name and have it stored alphabetically. There are 30
different commodities to choose from in 7 different combo boxes. The user
will pick the commodity from the combo box and enter the weight from the
scale and the form will calculate the price and all of the weights etc.

I have other forms and macros that will produce a daily, weekly, monthly,
and even annual summary of all activity.

It will tell me the total number of pounds and the amount of money that was
spent on each commodity for a certain time frame. It works,

BUT THE PROBLEM.
There are over 1,000 different customers and in Excel there is no way to do
a query for say, "Jack Smith". That is where I have been told that I should
use Access. Is it true that Access will let me do a query that I could
retreive all of the information for any of the 1,000 customers for any given
time frame?

I am an Access novice. Can anyone recommend a book that I should get that
will cover Access 2000 from a novice perspective.

Any help or comments will be appreciated.

Sincerely,
John Kitchens

 

[Dominic]

John,

Sounds like you have a nice spreadsheet system set up there. You certainly
sound like you know your way around Excel. Why can't you "query" your Excel
data for customer name? Wouldn't "sumproduct" or even "sumif" work for you?

HTH

 

[KARL DEWEY]

Also CountIF might be what you need. Sometimes I use an intermediate column
for more conditions ahead of SumIF or CountIF.

 

[Larry Daugherty]

Hi John,

The general rule is to use Excel for calculate intensive applications
and to use Access for data intense application. Your application
seems to be all about data and not much about calculation.

First, you probably can solve your immediate problem in Excel.
However, I expect that you're finding it harder to add features to
what you have.

If your motive in starting to learn Access is just to solve this one
problem, I wouldn't do it. In that case, I'd get in touch with a
competent Access developer and give her or him the specifications for
your application. Your current spreadsheet would be a supporting
document, not the complete specification. For a competent Access
developer, your application is a fairly simple one.

If your motive in learning Access is to be able to easily solve
problems like the one here then I encourage you to do so. Be advised
that Access has a long, steep learning curve to do it correctly. Many
novice Access developers have and Excel background and build their
first applications as though Access were a flawed version of Excel.
Access is a rapid application development system layered on a
relational database management system. Three are lots of rules to
learn and apply.

To your question about books: The "Dummies" books will help if you
can't find anything better. I recommend "Access [YourVersion]
Step-by-Step" from Microsoft Press. Once beyond that there are
hundreds of others from which to choose. My personal favorite is
"Access [YourVersion] Developer's Handbook" by Getz et alia. Do a
google search on these groups and "book" or "books". You'll find a
sizeable list. If you have a Barnes & Noble or a Borders book store
nearby go check them out.

A great resource for developers at any level is www.mvps.org/access

Also, check out all of the microsoft.public.access.* newsgroups. Of
particular interest to novices are "..tablesdesign" and
"..gettingstarted"

HTH