Easiest Access book

[Tesno Bay]

Hi,

This may seem like heresy...but I am trying to rationalize why I should use
Access instead of Excel for my database stuff. I really, really would like to
learn more about Access, and I am sure that once I did, I would feel
differently.

I have bought several Access books (phone books) and while they are full of
lots of good "how to" info, I just can't seem to grasp the practical need for
it for what I need to do. Things like book inventories, mailing campaigns and
donor results etc...

Can anyone suggest a good book on Access that gives realistic "homegrown"
examples on how and why Access is practical for the little guy, that isn't
running an Enterprise Application, but more like a small business from his home
office.

Thanks in Advance
T

 

[Ann]

Hi

I have found being a Computer Teacher that any of the QUE
books were great! The Access Bible being one of them.

I don't know if you are familiar with the publisher.

Any of the Access for dummies books (this is not an insult
by the way - I teach Access regularly and I find this book
great!) Try Amazon.

I do a certain amount of consultancy also with Access and
find that these books with the CDs are fantastic for
exercises and ideas! Wish you the best in your search!!

Ann

 

[Ling]

Hello!

I also find most books to be just too big and not that helpful, but had
decent luck with The Complete Reference:Access 2000 > there's a
"Complete" book for just about every tech subject out there. Sometimes
you just don't know what you're looking for, so a book isn't much help,
but this one helped me with a few things.

I am not a serious developer or programmer, but have designed a couple
of decent user databases for book inventory, simple personnel tracking,
etc. Nothing fancy mind you.

Access is a great tool for even a small business, actually especially
for small businesses. Excel will certainly let you get pretty fancy
with macros and formulas etc, but what happens when you want a report
from a huge spreadsheet? Access gives you all the tools: Tables (that
look just like spreadsheets) to hold your data, Forms to enter and
modify your data (without having to look at the tables), Queries to
extract very specific or very general info out of your Tables, and the
very-useful Reports to summarize all your table data.

Like anything else, there's a learning curve, and you just have to plug
at it and play to teach yourself. All the books in the world are
useless if you're just reading them. But I have found Access to be a
great tool for simple things, or more complicated, and you don't have
to be a visual basic whiz or database developer to use it.

Just my 3cents... Good luck.


Ling

 

[David]

Access is a database application and Excel is a
spreadsheet.
With Access you design tables to hold your data, relate
them to one another and then design forms to input data
and reports to report on the data that has been input.
Maybe this is not what you need and Excel will suffice for
your purposes.
Creating complex applications with Access is not a trivial
task but if you just need to input data to a single table
via a simple form and then query the results, it is not
beyond the scope of a novice. There are wizards that lead
you through the creation of such an application.
Do a search on Amazon.com for Access and look at the
various books on the subject.

 

[ARG]

I have found that the Microsoft Access 2000 Bible to be
really a great guide and reference. It covers everything
for the beginner to the pros. A cd is inluded with the
book which has the samples from the book that you can
load on to your pc. It is a think bbok but it is very
thorough.


Hope this helps...