Product Description

Develop your Access 2003 expertise instantly with proven techniques!

Let's face it: Microsoft Access is a large, intimidating program. Unlike Word or Excel where you can perform basic tasks without much in the way of training, Access presents challenges from the outset. Most people never progress beyond creating simple tables and using Wizards to create basic forms and reports. At the same time, everyone — from managers to researchers to administrative assistants — needs information and knows that what they seek is embedded somewhere in their Access tables. Without a more sophisticated knowledge of how to extract and present that data, they are forced to rely on office gurus and overworked IT people to provide canned reports or one-size-fits-all solutions.

This book changes all that by giving you the skills to extract the data you need (queries), build efficient front-ends for that data (forms), and publish the results in an attractive and easy-to-read format (reports). To that end, this book shuns the big Access picture and instead focuses intently on queries, forms, and reports. This in-depth approach will give you the knowledge and understanding you need to get at the data and prove the old saw that knowledge is indeed power.

Focuses like a laser on the three technologies that you must master to get the most out of Access: queries, forms, and reports.

Shuns database theory in favor of practical know-how that you can put to use right away.

Packed full of real-world examples and techniques to help you learn and understand the importance of each section.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54451 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Paul McFedries is the president of Logophilia Limited, a technical writing company. Now primarily a writer, Paul has worked as a programmer, consultant, spreadsheet developer and website developer. He has written more than 40 books that have sold nearly three million opies worldwide. These books include Formulas and Functions for Excel (Que, 2004), The Absolute Beginner's Guide to VBA (Que, 2004) and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Windows XP (Alpha, 2001).

Customer Reviews

learn SQL
McFedries has essentially produced a first course on SQL, using Microsoft Access as the user interface into a relational database. There are sections of the book about fairly simple UI controls and their usages. Like how to change fonts or colours. Mundane stuff.

But the book goes much deeper. It shows how Access can teach you much about many relational database topics. Table relationships, referential integrity, multiple table queries, table joins and so on. En route, the author gently introduces examples of SQL queries. The full syntax of which is complex enough to deter many new users. But by seeing the queries used in many simple contexts should help your retention.

So the book serves two purposes. The first is to learn Access. The second is to learn SQL and relational databases, using Access just as a means to an end.

Incredibly useful book
This book is terrific. It has helped me go from a novice user of Access, to a very proficient user. It has everything you need to know to build a solid database in an accessible format. The information is easy to find and incredibly easy to understand. I use it at work and I am continually having to track it down because it gets borrowed by my coworkers. Finally I asked the company to just buy a second copy, which they did.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you need a reference manual for forms, queries or reports. I have another Access book that is 1400 pages, but I never use it because this small book is a thousand times better, easier to understand, and provides on-point helpful information. I pull it out as soon as I'm about to work in Access and just keep it open on my desk. So far it's gotten me through everything I've wanted to do. Highly, highly recommended.

This Book Saved My Behind!
I just completed a very time-sensitive project with the help of this book, and would not have been able to meet my deadline without it! As a beginner/intermediate Access user, this book gave me all the information I needed to quickly throw together a database with a simple user interface that did some fairly complex calculations in the queries. Unlike Microsoft's online help, the excellent layout, table of contents and index of this book make it easy to find ways to accomplish what you need to do, even if you're not sure exactly what terminology to use. I would recommend this book for anyone who who knows that Access is capable of doing lots of cool tricks, but just isn't sure how to get it to do them.