Are further templates available?

[grammatim]

I'm brand new to Access -- it only gets a few pages in the Office
manuals, presumably because it's so complicated that it won't fit into
200 pages or so like the overviews of Word and PowerPoint, so I never
realized I had this fancy database thing right here in Office 2003 --
and I've started reading a book that shows me what it would take to
get something going ...

I'd like to use Access as a bibliography database like EndNote (or the
obsolete ProCite), so I wonder whether there's a place where people
make available the "front ends" they've created to do specialized
jobs.

Office Online Help brought me to pages with a dozen Access 2000
templates and less than a dozen Access 2003 templates. There are ones
for a "book collection" database, and a couple others, for CDs and
DVDs, but they're awfully simplistic and not what I need. (I kinda got
spoiled by Papyrus, a superb Mac-only app that wasn't upgraded to OS
X, but then neither did I, but for work I had to switch to PC.)

Any pointers would be appreciated.

(Also, do people have favorite book series? I like the Using series,
but the For Dummies are 30% off at Borders this month, and 70% of $30
is a lot more congenial than the full $50 for Using Access 2003, which
unlike Using PowerPoint 2003 isn't even available cheap at amazon
used, or eBay "buy it now." I wonder how much less information is in
the For Dummies than in the Using, since it has many fewer pages and a
much more chatty style.)

Thanks!

 

[John W. Vinson]

I'd like to use Access as a bibliography database like EndNote (or the
obsolete ProCite), so I wonder whether there's a place where people
make available the "front ends" they've created to do specialized
jobs.

Well... that's a BIG BIG project. EndNote is a very powerful, complex program
with many features; it would take months of high-end work to duplicate half of
them in Access. Why not just... ummm... buy EndNote?

Office Online Help brought me to pages with a dozen Access 2000
templates and less than a dozen Access 2003 templates. There are ones
for a "book collection" database, and a couple others, for CDs and
DVDs, but they're awfully simplistic and not what I need. (I kinda got
spoiled by Papyrus, a superb Mac-only app that wasn't upgraded to OS
X, but then neither did I, but for work I had to switch to PC.)

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html

The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html

A free tutorial written by Crystal (MS Access MVP):
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-22.html

MVP Allen Browne's tutorials:
http://allenbrowne.com/links.html#Tutorials

(Also, do people have favorite book series? I like the Using series,
but the For Dummies are 30% off at Borders this month, and 70% of $30
is a lot more congenial than the full $50 for Using Access 2003, which
unlike Using PowerPoint 2003 isn't even available cheap at amazon
used, or eBay "buy it now." I wonder how much less information is in
the For Dummies than in the Using, since it has many fewer pages and a
much more chatty style.)

Dummies - in my experience, I haven't looked at the most recent editions - is
quite good for people who want to use existing Access applications, or to
develop very simple, basic ones. It will get you from A to E pretty well. If
you want to go on through F, G, and on beyond Zebra, you'll need some more
advanced resources - and a lot of time and skull sweat. It's a powerful
program but it does require a major learning curve!

We're here to help, though; I like to think that this is one of the better and
more supportive newsgroup communities around.

 

[grammatim]

Well... that's a BIG BIG project. EndNote is a very powerful, complex program
with many features; it would take months of high-end work to duplicate half of
them in Access.

I would find the part where it interacts with the document as you type
it more trouble than it's worth.

Why not just... ummm... buy EndNote?

EndNote ... $250.

ProCite (if they still sell it -- the website's last update is
2003) ... $250

[also, their comparison page says it doesn't handle Unicode and
EndNote does, which is a dealbreaker for me].

Access ... Priceless.

(And I didn't even use my MasterCard.)

That's already half the cost of the Asus 8 Gb tiny notebook computer,
soon to be available, which is meant for Linux/OpenOffice but can run
XP/Office if you already have them.

I'll look through these. Thanks!

Jeff Conrad's resources page:http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html

The Access Web resources page:http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html

A free tutorial written by Crystal (MS Access MVP):http://allenbrowne.com/casu-22.html

MVP Allen Browne's tutorials:http://allenbrowne.com/links.html#Tutorials


Dummies - in my experience, I haven't looked at the most recent editions -is
quite good for people who want to use existing Access applications, or to
develop very simple, basic ones. It will get you from A to E pretty well. If
you want to go on through F, G, and on beyond Zebra, you'll need some more
advanced resources - and a lot of time and skull sweat. It's a powerful
program but it does require a major learning curve!

We're here to help, though; I like to think that this is one of the betterand
more supportive newsgroup communities around.

I found the PowerPoint and Word equivalents in November, so when I
looked for an Access model, I found no fewer than 40 to choose from.

 

[John W. Vinson]

Well... that's a BIG BIG project. EndNote is a very powerful, complex program
with many features; it would take months of high-end work to duplicate half of
them in Access.

I would find the part where it interacts with the document as you type
it more trouble than it's worth.

Why not just... ummm... buy EndNote?

EndNote ... $250.

ProCite (if they still sell it -- the website's last update is
2003) ... $250

[also, their comparison page says it doesn't handle Unicode and
EndNote does, which is a dealbreaker for me].

Access ... Priceless.

(And I didn't even use my MasterCard.)

<bg>

on the other hand... six months of concentrated effort developing a complex
application? What value do you put on your time?

If you lower your sights a bit, and don't need all the features of EndNote
(such as journal-specific footnote styles, etc.) then it becomes a more
reasonable project; but if you're ambitious - go for it!

That's already half the cost of the Asus 8 Gb tiny notebook computer,
soon to be available, which is meant for Linux/OpenOffice but can run
XP/Office if you already have them.

I'm pretty sure Access will NOT run under OpenOffice - check for sure before
you commit to a particular OS.

I'll look through these. Thanks!

I found the PowerPoint and Word equivalents in November, so when I
looked for an Access model, I found no fewer than 40 to choose from.

There's LOTS of Access books, lots of them very good. Do try to sit down with
a stack of books in your local (good) bookstore and look through the book
carefully. Good table of contents? Good index? Can you FIND information? Does
the writing work with your learning style? (People are different; what works
really well for A might be boring/incomprehensible/perplexing to B and vice
versa).

 

[grammatim]

I would find the part where it interacts with the document as you type
it more trouble than it's worth.

EndNote ... $250.

ProCite (if they still sell it -- the website's last update is
2003) ... $250

[also, their comparison page says it doesn't handle Unicode and
EndNote does, which is a dealbreaker for me].

Access ... Priceless.

(And I didn't even use my MasterCard.)

<bg>

on the other hand... six months of concentrated effort developing a complex
application? What value do you put on your time?

If you lower your sights a bit, and don't need all the features of EndNote
(such as journal-specific footnote styles, etc.) then it becomes a more
reasonable project; but if you're ambitious - go for it!

That's already half the cost of the Asus 8 Gb tiny notebook computer,
soon to be available, which is meant for Linux/OpenOffice but can run
XP/Office if you already have them.

I'm pretty sure Access will NOT run under OpenOffice - check for sure before
you commit to a particular OS.

No, it comes with Linux and OpenOffice (which doesn't seem to include
a database component yet), but if you already own Windows XP and
Office, you can replace(? or have both simultaneously?) the Linux with
it. There were nearly 100 customer reviews at amazon (of the smaller-
capacity version) a couple weeks ago.

There's LOTS of Access books, lots of them very good. Do try to sit down with
a stack of books in your local (good) bookstore and look through the book
carefully. Good table of contents? Good index? Can you FIND information? Does
the writing work with your learning style? (People are different; what works
really well for A might be boring/incomprehensible/perplexing to B and vice
versa).

I meant 40 microsoft.public.access.* newsgroups.

 

[John W. Vinson]

I meant 40 microsoft.public.access.* newsgroups.

<blush> Sorry, that was clear if I had read carefully.

Most of the groups' names are pretty selfexplanatory: Forms, reports,
modules-DAO-VBA, gettingstarted. And most of the volunteers cover several (I'm
subscribed to nine currently) so though it helps considerably to post to an
appropriate newsgroup, even off-topic questions for the particular group may
well get answered.

 

[grammatim]

At the "Free Downloads" page given in the Baseball Cards Collection
thread, I found a shareware ($39.95 for the full version, Lite version
distributed free) bibliographic program that appears to do all I need
and more; it's called Scholar's Aid, and I think it's listed under
Miscellaneous Databases there.

 

[John W. Vinson]

At the "Free Downloads" page given in the Baseball Cards Collection
thread, I found a shareware ($39.95 for the full version, Lite version
distributed free) bibliographic program that appears to do all I need
and more; it's called Scholar's Aid, and I think it's listed under
Miscellaneous Databases there.

Thanks for the info! I'll save a link; the question comes up fairly often.

 

[grammatim]

Thanks for the info! I'll save a link; the question comes up fairly often.

Now that I've read through the documentation (but haven't started my
30-day trial period yet), it looks like it's very old-fashioned --
maybe going back to Windows 3.1 days, or even DOS -- with the GUI
updated ca. 2000, but the procedures rather roundabout.