Microsoft Access 2003 Forms, Reports, and Queries

By Paul McFedries

Book Overview

Microsoft Access is a large, intimidating program. Unlike Word or Excel where users can perform basic tasks without much in the way of training, Access presents challenges from the outset. Most users never progress beyond creating simple tables and using Wizards to create basic forms and reports. At the same time, all users - from managers to researchers to administrative assistants - need to know 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 readers the skills required to etract the data they 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 the reader the skills and understanding he or she needs to get at the data and prove the old adage that knowledge is indeed power.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789731525
• ISBN13: 9780789731524
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Pearson Education
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great reference and intro if you are familiar with programming

I've never done SQL or DB programming before, but I have experience with data structures and programming in other languages. This book was a great reference tool to introduce me to the language. Most importantly, it laid out syntax very neatly. I skimmed through most of it in a few hours and was successfully writing SQL queries (no wizards) afterwards. The size of the book is really nice. A great reference to keep handy.

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.

Well-Rounded Basic to Intermediate Reference

This book stays next to my computer at all times! (Along with the "Automating Microsoft Access with VBA" book in the "Business Solutions" series.) I found great references for building criteria expressions, custom input masks and detailed query operations, along with modifying forms, queries and reports created with the access wizard. Also a good resource for form error handling and data validation. I would recommend it to a newer Access user for a well-rounded introduction to customizing forms/queries/reports, or as a handy reference for intermediate users. It doesn't include much VBA; most of the changes made are through the form/report properties window or query builder window.

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.

Very practical and useful

Great book. It is very practical and useful. I have managed to do several things following the book as a model. I understood relational databases, but needed some ideas and how-to's for making an application spiffy. I wasn't sure the queries would be useful, but low and behold had to do some queries in another database and they were very useful (most of my databases are not number based). I highly recommend it as a practical guide to doing some cool things!