Introduction to Microsoft Access

Lesson 1

Getting to Know Access 2019

In this lesson, you'll find out what Access is and how individuals, businesses, and organizations use it to store information. You'll begin to build an Access database, including all the components that turn a list of records into reports, forms, and queries. You'll start by opening the application and creating a new database.

Controlling Your Access Table Fields

It's time to lay down the law! In this lesson, you'll impose rules that automatically fill an Access table field with a preset value or that automatically insert the symbols commonly included in phone numbers. You'll also set up rules that require allow only certain kinds of data in certain fields. With just a few minutes of work, you can make data entry simpler, clearer, and practically error-frees.

Creating Tables and Relationships

You'll create additional tables for the class database, customize them along the way, and then build relationships between them. This all paves the way for later database features, such as reports, queries, and forms that draw from multiple tables in the database.

Building Powerful Forms

In this lesson, you'll use forms for data entry and for viewing records in your tables. You'll meet the Form Wizard, which makes form building fast and easy and which allows you to select one or more tables' fields to include. You'll also learn how to change the form layout.

Adding Versatility to Forms

In this lesson, you'll add buttons and controls to forms. You'll also adjust table relationships to support the creation of multi-table forms, which paves the way to creating queries and reports that draw data from more than one table.

Interviewing Your Database

Using queries to sort, filter, and search your database is one of the most important skills you'll master in this course. In this lesson, you'll create queries that search for specific data. You'll also customize how Access displays that data. By following the instructions step by step, you'll first become familiar with the process, and then you'll get to create a query on your own!

Taking Queries to the Next Level

A query that puts specific records in order or finds all the records that have a general piece of information in common is, well, pretty common. Being able to create that kind of query is a great foundation skill, but it won't help you find a very specific record. Nor will it let you search for records within a span of dates or other numeric values. It also won't help you exclude certain records, reducing a large pool of data to just those records you need to see. In this lesson, you'll create queries that give you true power to search your database.

Multi-Table Query Control

In this lesson, you'll learn to plan, build, and use queries that pull data from more than one table at a time. This gives you more power over your data and allows you to build a great foundation for truly customized reports.

Reporting on Your Tables

Reports are easy to create and to customize. In this lesson, you'll build a simple report using the Report Wizard. Then you'll change the report's appearance, using layout view and design view. These skills provide the foundation to create and design any report you may need on any data in your database.

Creating Query-Based Reports

In this lesson, you'll create reports that are based on the results of queries you create to sort and filter your database. Because queries can combine data from multiple tables, filter for specific data, and sort the results, your report reflects just the data that meet the query's criteria. This makes truly customized reporting possible—and quite simple.

Mastering Report Design

In this lesson, you'll plan and create a completely customized report, using a specialized query that controls which data the report includes. You'll add fields that perform calculations on your data. You'll customize your report's layout, too, using design view's many tools for controlling the structure and appearance of your data.

Automating Your Database With Macros

Building macros (short programs that perform a series of steps) helps you speed up and create consistency in your more repetitive Access tasks. From opening a form to running a report to building a new record in a table, macros eliminate redundant procedures by turning them into something you can do with one click.