Access

Access

By: Robert Defibaugh

1.

Microsoft access is a database that you will be able to use when you need to gather or analyze your data. You can use data from excel if you were previously using excel you will be able to put that information in Microsoft access. Microsoft access is great because it will give you the ability to put all your phone numbers, names of clients, and your inventory into its database. You will be able to organize this data in a more effective way then you could with excel.

Most of the time it is fine to use Microsoft excel to for calculating and storing small amounts of information, but since you have so much information a larger database such as access is a better choice. The way Microsoft access works is just like any normal database would by storing all your data. It gives you to option to show relationships between certain data that you have for example you could create a relationship between customers and sales report. Your data will be stored in tables which can be thought of as a smaller spreadsheet that stores an exact type of data. You can have many different fields in your table which can be thought of as columns, like the ones you see in excel. You can set up your tables so that certain data can’t be entered by giving the field its structure. Your queries are your primary tools for retrieving information from your database, they will consist of questions or queries when presented to the database. You should have a primary key for each of your fields, it is a field that has a set value that is stored in your database. You can automatically create a primary key through access, you will want to choose a column with a numerical value if possible. This can help you make sure that each number id that you have stored for your customers is not the same. A primary key basically just gives you identification for each record in your table. A report is very important...