Microsoft Access - Tracking Tool

Microsoft Access is a versatile tracking tool for both home and business uses.

At first, you might start to use Microsoft Excel Software to accomplish what you need to track information.

As you begin to add more and more information and want to select, manipulate and summarize that data, the spreadsheet falls short of your requirements.

The next option would be to import that information into Microsoft Access to be stored into a table.

Access is a dedicated data management application and is very flexible and efficient to store and relate similar information to minimize duplication and redundancy.

Access provides specialized data management tools, options for connecting to external databases, customized features, and facilities for publishing live data on the Web or a company intranet.

Access lets you create a relational database whereas other office applications (Excel, Word, Outlook) store information as a flat-file database.

The flat-file database information is usually duplicated in separate records and increases the likelihood of errors as well as require unnecessary data entry.

In Access, an individual list of records is known as a table and the number of records entered into a table is limited only by storage capabilities.

A relational database solves the problem of duplicated data by storing a single copy of each set of duplicated fields in a separate list.

These separate lists are then related to each other by using identifiers which become tables related to each other.

You can then pull the separated data back together again in very flexible ways by using queries, reports, and other Access database objects which can display data belonging to different tables according to the criteria you specify.

Another problem that can be avoided with a flat-file database is when there is a many to many relationahip such as an author may write one or more books and a book may have one or more authors.

Some of the topics we'll be covering in this section will be:

Access Password
Access Tutorial
Access Template
Access Query
Access Relationship
Access Sample Database
Access Tip

So Microsoft Access is a very powerful relational database application for both personal and business uses.

If you can learn this software, you'll find so many uses for it.

Subscribe here for FREE!

Every once in a while we're sending out a Windows XP How To ezine. We would be honored if you signed up for it.

We understand you are careful about giving your email address to anyone. But we promise we won't sell or give your email address to anyone, or use it for any other purpose than to send Windows XP How To Ezine.

Important Note: Spam filters that are active at your ISP, mail service and/or mail client, may accidentally filter out any email we send in response. Read how you can make sure you receive messages from us..

Return from Microsoft Access to the Home Page