access Archives

Using the Three Normal Forms in Microsoft Access

One of the more abstruse points of procedure in Access involves the three so-called normal forms. What, exactly, are they? If you think “guidelines”, or “protocols”, you’d be in the ballpark. When building a database, especially a relational database, there are some “streamlinings” which allow …

How to Import and Export Data in Access

The good news is, the import and export processes in Access—and in general—are two sides of the same coin. And there really isn’t any bad news, other than making sure the data are set up in a way that Access can understand—namely, something row-and-column-ish when …

Creating Calculated Fields in Microsoft Access

When setting up reports in Access, we’re trying to learn something which wasn’t in the original data. Something calculated, derived, or otherwise figured out from the existing information. It’s fairly easy to do, though there are a few steps. After determining the requirement—a sales tax …

Data Types, Properties, and Relationships in Access

A fundamental aspect of Access databases is the setup of relationships between tables. It’s usually the nature of business databases to have them. So the actual creation of the relationship isn’t hard to do. But there are a couple of not-so-obvious things the user needs …

How to Normalize Data in Microsoft Access

The term “normalization” gets thrown about quite a bit in database circles, to try to explain part of data organization. But it’s vague, to someone not acquainted with database-ese. The idea of making data “normal” is not too far from the meaning used by database …

How to Align Fields in Access Forms

Working with Microsoft Access can be kind of intimidating when you start, especially because there seem to be so many details to absorb and keep track of. And even fairly experienced database people have to watch out for the little things. One which really drives …

Access vs Excel—Which should we use for what?

Judging Access vs Excel can take thought. Most people find Microsoft Excel fairly easy to learn—it has a fairly gentle learning curve, the fundamentals only take a short time to pick up, and the program is actually fairly versatile—it’s not just a ledger book on …

MS Access Resources

Microsoft has recently published a very thorough set of MS Access 2010 resources to the TechNet site. Access has always been the part of the Office Suite that straddles the end-user/IT Professional fence. The resources on TechNet are definitely geared toward Access Developers rather than folks that might be using MS Access more casually.

What’s New in Microsoft Office 2010 – Part 1 of 6

With every new release of Microsoft Office (or really any software product for that matter) users of a previous version ask themselves the question “should I upgrade?” And, as always, the answer is…it depends. I’ve collected a few of the new features of Office 2010 to hopefully help you make your decision. However, if you’re one of the many folks who didn’t move to Office 2007 because of the new Ribbon interface – you may want to seriously consider Office 2010. It corrects some of the confusion introduced by the Ribbon interface and adds quite a few useful new features as well. In this post, we’ll explore some of the new features that are common to most, if not all, of the Office 2010 applications.