Chapter 1 : Microsoft Online IT Training Microsoft Learning Each video is between 15 to 20 minutes long. The first one covers the key concepts and principles that make Microsoft Access what it is, and subsequent videos explore skills like database creation, querying for data, and using advanced query parameters. While not as intuitive and user-friendly as most other Office programs, Access offers powerful features for creating databases and extracting data from them. Learning some basic steps will allow you to begin to make databases, tables, reports, forms and queries. Once the program becomes more familiar, you can start to learn advanced techniques, such as creating mail merges and more. Step Create a database. Step Add tables to the Access database. In Database view, select "Tables" under "Objects. Follow the table wizard instructions to create the type of table desired. Video of the Day Step Create relationships between tables. In Database view, select "Database Diagrams" under "Objects. The "Create Relationship" dialog will open. Click "OK" to confirm. Step Use forms to enter data in the database. Go to the "Forms" tab of the database menu, or click "Forms" on the toolbar. Select "Create Form by Using Wizard," and use the double arrow button to choose fields. Select a style, click "Next" and enter a name for the form. Click "Finish" and begin entering data. Step Create a query to extract information from the database. Select "Queries" from the toolbar, or go to the "Queries" tab. Double lick "Create Query by Using Wizard". The Query Wizard will open. Select a table, and choose the fields desired for the query results, then click "Next. Enter a name for the query and click "Finish. Page 1
Chapter 2 : Access videos and tutorials - Access Learn Access Now! Chapter 1. Welcome to Learn Access Now, a full-length book available online. Even though Learn Access Now is designed to specifically teach beginners how to use Microsoft Access, even longtime users of the program can learn a thing or two. But beyond that, it turns out that Access and Excel are completely different Excel Vs. Access - Can a Spreadsheet Replace a Database? Which tool should you use to manage data? Access and Excel both feature data filtering, collation and querying. Long story short, Excel is for data analysis while Access is for data management. If you are required to use Excel and yet have to familiarize yourself with it, these resources will quickly introduce you to the basics and more. Read More, the Microsoft Access side is far sparser. Unless otherwise noted, these courses and tutorials are meant for Microsoft Access and may or may not be compatible with other versions of the software. Fortunately, Microsoft provides a series of online videos that cover several different topics for Beginners and Intermediates. Each video is between 15 to 20 minutes long. The first one covers the key concepts and principles that make Microsoft Access what it is, and subsequent videos explore skills like database creation, querying for data, and using advanced query parameters. Of those lessons, 19 of them cover basic Microsoft Access education. Most are available in either text format or video format both formats include helpful diagrams and illustrations to guide you along. Quackit Access Tutorial Though Quackit is technically a resource for web developers, it does contain a short and sweet tutorial series for Microsoft Access. As such, it should be supplemented with a more in-depth resource. Suffice it to say that this guy knows his stuff. His website is home to a number of tutorials, but his biggest hit is his Microsoft Access series. It comes in two versions: We recommend the second one. Since it never hurts to learn The Access Beginner Level 1 series is comprised of 13 videos that last a little over 3 hours in total. As of now, the Level 2 series is halfway done and still in production. Want to brush up on your Office skills? This is a great resource for doing that. Why not take advantage of it? Here are a few courses to get you started. The subscription is well worth it. Udemy courses are more pick-and-choose. Want to continue your Udemy education? Check out these Udemy self-improvement courses and these Udemy entrepreneur courses Thinking of Starting a Business? Well, why not take up an online course on entrepreneurship and make it happen? Alternatives to Microsoft Access As useful as Microsoft Access can be, not everyone is blessed with a full suite of Microsoft Office software. Read More, such as LibreOffice Base. But for those of you who have Microsoft Access but never knew how to use it, you no longer have any excuses! These free resources will get you up to speed in no time, so take advantage of them. Will you be picking up Microsoft Access now? Share with us in the comments below. Know of any other free and useful Microsoft Access tutorials? Stay informed by joining our newsletter! Page 2
Chapter 3 : Course details Microsoft Learning Learn how to use criteria to filter your Access data. This course covers adding criteria to queries, using AND and OR logic, logical operators such as IN and BETWEEN, and how to use wildcards. You need a basic understanding of queries to complete this course. Getting Started with Access This is section 1 of 5 in this chapter Access provides a powerful yet comfortable environment in which you can manage your information. Using Access, you can tame even the most difficult data-management tasks. This chapter is the first step in your journey. Here you will learn basic terms, as well as how to start and exit Access. You will also learn how to get help and even catch a glimpse of what you can do with Access. By the time you finish this chapter, you will understand the following key concepts: What a database is How tables, forms, and queries relate to a database What records and fields are How to start Access The parts of the Access environment How Wizards can help you How to get help when using Access Possible uses for both databases and Access How to exit Access Access Terminology Before you dive into the Access environment, there are a few terms with which you should be familiar. As you work through this book, you will undoubtedly come across other new terms. The text defines many of these terms at their first use. You can also use the online Help System to find the definitions of many different Access terms. The following sections discuss the major terms which you must understand before you work with Access. What is a Database? A database is simply a collection of related information. For example, if you gathered together all your photographs, you would have a database of photographs. If you collected all your photographs that included your dog, you would have either a more targeted database or a subset of your larger database. If your database is small for example, your home insurance policies, you can probably manage the information manually. In such instances, you might use a traditional management method such as a card file or a simple list on a piece of paper. However, as the database becomes larger, your management task becomes more difficult. For example, it would be virtually impossible to manually manage the customer database of a large corporation. This is where your computer and a database management system DBMS come in handy. DBMS software such as Access lets you manage large amounts of information quickly and easily. In Access, a database consists not just of information, but also the tables into which the information is organized. Access databases also contain related queries, forms, reports, and programming instructions. Because these terms deserve further definition, they are covered in the following sections. What is a Table? In Access, tables contain the actual information in your database. There can be more than one table in a database. The information in each table can relate to information in other tables in your database. For example, you might have one table that contains a record of all the door locks in your building. In the same database, another table might have a list of all the keys for those locks. Still another table might contain the names of all the people who have the keys. All three tables contain related information, so they belong to the same database. Figure depicts the relationship between the tables and this database. Figure How Access relates tables and databases. Your first step in creating a database is to determine the information you need. Next, you will use Access to design a table to hold the information. Figure illustrates the Design view of Access. You use Design view to specify the framework used for each of your table entries. Figure Design view for a table in Access. After you design your table or tables, you will use Datasheet view to enter and examine view your data. Figure illustrates how your data may appear in Datasheet view mode. Figure Datasheet view for a table in Access. What is a Query? When you work with large databases, there will be times when you will want to work with specific pieces of your data. For example, if you have a company database, you may want to view the names of all your customers who reside in New York. On such occasions, you would form a query. A query defines which database information you want to view. Think of a query as a question you ask the database, such as "Who are the customers that reside in New York? Another query might request only those customers with children. Essentially, a query limits or filters the information in a database. When you use a query as a filter, Access displays only information that satisfies the query. Why would you use queries? Specifically because you want to work with only a part of your database. Queries make it easy for you to work with only those records that fit Page 3
a particular criteria. Access lets you get as broad or as specific or as complex as you want in the queries you develop. A database exists to store information. After you determine the information your database will contain, you will need to enter the data. Later, you may want to examine, add to, or change that data. Although you can use the Datasheet view to accomplish each of these tasks, you may want instead to create a custom display screen that lets you enter, view, and edit information. Within Access, custom display screens are called forms. Using forms, you can both display the information in a table and add buttons, text boxes, labels, and other objects that make data entry much easier. Earlier, in Figure, you saw what a table looked like as a Datasheet. Figure shows an example of a form used to input information into the same table. Notice how using the form provides a better interface for the user. Figure An example of a form used to enter information in a table. What is a Record? A record is a single block of information, such as employee or customer data. A table is made up of many records. For example, if you have a table that contains information about your baseball card collection, a record is the specific information about a single baseball card. Sometimes, records are referred to as rows because, within a table, Access represents individual records as rows. What is a Field? Just as tables are made up of records, records are made up of fields. A field is the smallest piece of information in a database. For example, if you have a table containing your phone list, each record represents a different person or business in that list. In turn, those records are made up of individual fields names, addresses, or phone numbers. Figure shows the relationship of fields, records, tables, and databases. Figure How fields, records, tables, and databases are related. You may also hear fields referred to as columns. Within tables, Access represents fields as columns when you look at data in Datasheet view refer back to Figure Page 4
Chapter 4 : Datenbanksoftware und -anwendungen Microsoft Access Access is the database application in the Microsoft Office suite. Get Access help producing forms, queries, and reports using an Access database. Some people automate everything from their wine collections to their home finances. The one thing to be careful of is that Access is deceptively easy to use. Its wonderful built-in wizards make Access look like a product that anyone can use. After answering a series of questions, you have finished application switchboards that enable you to easily navigate around your application, data-entry screens, reports, and the underlying tables that support them. Actually, when Microsoft first released Access, many people asked whether the author was concerned that her business as a computer programmer and trainer would diminish because Access seemed to let absolutely anyone write a database application. After reading this text, you can make some modifications to what the wizards have generated, and no problems should occur. Access as a Development Platform for Small-Business Applications Access is an excellent platform for developing an application that can run a small business. The ability to create macros and to build code modules allows power users and developers to create code libraries of reusable functions, and the ability to add code behind forms and reports allows them to create powerful custom forms and reports. The main limitation of using Access for developing a custom small-business application is the time and money involved in the development process. Small-business owners often experience this problem on an even greater scale than personal users. The demands of a small-business application are usually much higher than those of a personal application. Many doctors, attorneys, and other professionals have called the author after they reached a dead end in the development process. An example is a doctor who built a series of forms and reports to automate her office. All went well until it came time to produce patient billings, enter payments, and produce receivable reports. Although at first glance these processes seem simple, on further examination the doctor realized that the wizard-produced reports and forms did not provide the sophistication necessary for her billing process. Unfortunately, the doctor did not have the time or programming skills to add the necessary features. So, in using Access as a tool to develop small-business applications, you must be realistic about the time and money involved in developing anything but the simplest of applications. Access as a Development Platform for Departmental Applications Access is perfect for developing applications for departments in large corporations. Most departments in large corporations have the development budgets to produce well-designed applications. Fortunately, most departments also usually have a PC guru who is more than happy to help design forms and reports. This gives the department a sense of ownership because it has contributed to the development of its application. If complex form, report design, or coding is necessary, large corporations usually have on-site resources available that can provide the necessary assistance. If the support is not available within the corporation, most corporations are willing to outsource to obtain the necessary expertise. Access as a Development Platform for Corporation-Wide Applications Although Access might be best suited for departmental applications, you can also use it to produce applications that you distribute throughout an organization. How successful this endeavor is depends on the corporation. These numbers vary depending on factors such as the following: How much traffic already exists on the network. How much RAM and how many processors the server has. How the server is already being used. For example, are applications such as Microsoft Office being loaded from the server or from local workstations? What types of tasks the users of the application are performing. For example, are they querying, entering data, running reports, and so on? Where Access and Access applications are run from the server or the workstation. What network operating system is in place. Remember that these numbers vary immensely depending on the factors mentioned and on what you and the other users of the application define as acceptable performance. Acting as a front end, Access can display the data retrieved from the database server in reports, datasheets, or forms. If the user updates the data in an Access form, the workstation sends the update to the back-end database. Access as a Tool to Develop Web Applications Introduced with Access was the ability for you to use Access to build web applications, which are applications that can run in a browser. Page 5
Chapter 5 : How to Learn Microsoft Access: 5 Free Online Resources How to Use Microsoft Access. Microsoft Access is a database creation program that allows for anyone to easily maintain and edit a database. It is suitable for anything from small projects to large businesses, and is a very visual program. A Brief MS Access Tutorial Very simply, Microsoft Access is an information management tool that helps you store information for reference, reporting, and analysis. Microsoft Access helps you analyze large amounts of information, and manage related data more efficiently than Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet applications. This article shows you when to use Access, and how it can help make you more effective. Bookmark this page Send to a Friend Table of Contents The Problem A spreadsheet program is a terrific tool for maintaining and calculating small sets of information. You can sort, filter, and format the data quickly and easily. But spreadsheets are not ideal for handling hundreds of records where you need to have "one version of the truth" for something like a customer, a contact, or main "thing" you need to track. It is very easy to introduce errors into a spreadsheet, which then makes analysis, summing, and reporting very challenging. The image below provides a quick example of several key challenges spreadsheets face. Store Related Information Together, Eliminate Duplication The value any database can provide is to store related information in one place, and then let you connect various different things together sometimes called "entities" in database speak. You store one version of the truth for any given thing, like a client, a DVD, or an order. Some of the major benefits to using a database are: Fewer errors and inconsistencies. Maintaining one version of the truth for the things you need to track minimizes the potential for duplication, errors, and inconsistent values. In the Excel example above, customer names, contact phone numbers, and product names are misspelled, transposed, and abbreviated in different forms. Imagine trying to create a report or graph in Excel that shows an accurate picture of your sales or other key performance indicators. You and others working in your database need only change a single record and all other related things in your database will automatically "see" the change. In a database, there is only one customer record to change. Every other record orders, contacts, etc that relates to that customer record will never need to change because they are joined to the customer. Databases provide a central location to store, secure, and control your data. Microsoft Access includes the ability to encrypt and password protect database files. And with users relying on a database rather than separate Excel spreadsheets, you can have greater control over access to the information. Better Decisions and Insight. Perhaps most importantly, a single source of truth in a standardized format means you can gain better insight and make better decisions by reporting and analyzing your data in a database. Users are familiar with Excel charting, and databases like Microsoft Access can provide similar capabilities, while going beyond Excel with more powerful historical trending, aggregation, and query filtering. Chapter 6 : Free Access Tutorial at GCFGlobal This Microsoft Access tutorial is aimed at anyone who wishes to learn how to use Microsoft Access. It assumes a basic understanding of databases and how they work. Chapter 7 : Learn Access Now! Learn how Access can work with Other Microsoft Office programs. Powerful Skills That Increase Your Value in the Marketplace This course will move Microsoft Access into your "comfort zone" so you can plan what parts of the program you want to learn in detail and what you want to achieve. Chapter 8 : What Types of Things Can I Do with Microsoft Access? Why Use Microsoft Access? InformIT Access Training and Tutorials. Watch our video tutorials and learn how to use Access to manage data. Let our experts teach you how to run an SQL query, create forms and reports, and navigate Access databases. Page 6
Chapter 9 : What is Microsoft Access Used For? A Brief Introduction to MS Access Databases Access, Microsoft's powerful database software, is the perfect introduction for those new to relational databases. This course provides an overview for first-time users. Adam Wilbert explains the best uses for Access, tours the interface, and guides viewers through various Access conventions and tasks, like understanding how objects. Page 7