Access Essentials: Access Essentials

Also by M.L. Humphrey

Listing of all books by M.L. Humphrey

Access Essentials

Access for Beginners

Intermediate Access

Excel Essentials

Excel for Beginners

Intermediate Excel

50 Useful Excel Functions

50 More Excel Functions

Word Essentials

Word for Beginners

Intermediate Word

PowerPoint Essentials

PowerPoint for Beginners

Intermediate PowerPoint

Access Essentials

M.L. Humphrey

Contents

Access for Beginners

Introduction

Basic Terminology

How An Access Database Works

Four Main Components of an Access Database

Access versus Excel and the Dangers of Working in a Database Environment

Absolute Basics

Basics of Navigating Access

Tables: Preparing An External Data Source

Tables: Uploading an Excel File

Tables: Uploading a .CSV File

Tables: Exporting An Existing Table to Excel

Tables: Uploading Data to an Existing Table

Tables: Creating One from Scratch

Field Data Types

Table Views

Amending Records In Tables

Navigating a Table or Query in Access

Queries: Basic Detail Query

Queries: Basic Summary Query

Query Views and the Design View

Relationships

Queries: Queries Using More Than One Table or Query

Summary Results, Sorting, and Filtering in a Table or Query

Queries: Using Simple Criteria to Narrow Down Results

Printing, Forms, and Reports: A Brief Discussion

Where To Get Additional Information

Conclusion

Intermediate Access

Introduction

Basic Terminology Recap

Overview of the Four Main Components of an Access Database

Tables: Default Values

Tables: Validation Rules

Queries: Including a Fixed Value in a Query

Queries: Writing a Simple Calculation into a Query

Queries: Troubleshooting Issues with Expressions

Queries: A SQL Crash Course

Queries: Union Queries

Queries: Crosstab Queries

Queries: Asking for User Input in a Query

Queries: A Brief Mention of Other Query Types

Forms: An Overview

Reports: An Overview

Forms and Reports: Views

Forms and Reports: Editing and Formatting Text Boxes

Forms and Reports: Editing and Formatting at the Document Level

Reports: Report Sections

Reports: Grouping Your Data

Reports: Sorting Your Data

Reports: Add Summary Values

Reports: Conditional Formatting

Print Preview

Other Tips and Tricks

Where To Go From Here

Conclusion

About the Author

Copyright

Access for Beginners

ACCESS ESSENTIALS - BOOK 1

Introduction

Microsoft Excel is my first love. And my go-to program for when I need to do a calculation or track data. But the fact of the matter is, there are times when Excel just doesn't cut it. Most notably, when I'm trying to combine information from more than one source and generate summaries of that information. That's where Microsoft Access comes into play.

(Now, technically, I think Excel in recent versions has been amended so that you could potentially combine multiple data sources within Excel much like you can do in Access, but I tried playing with it once, found it horrifying, and quickly retreated back to using Access. So we'll ignore that possibility for now.)

I've also used Access over Excel in the past when I had large amounts of text that I needed to store and make available to users. (I've created some massive text-based spreadsheets in Excel in the past, but at a certain point the text just doesn't display well. You have to manually resize each row to make all the text visible and sometimes even that doesn't work.)

So those are my two default reasons for using Access: when I need to link data across multiple sources to create summary reports or analysis and when the data I need to track includes very lengthy text fields.

This is because I come to Access as someone used to using Excel rather than as a database expert.

It's important to understand this because it will impact the way in which I teach Access and the strengths and weaknesses I personally see in using Access. If you're a database person, this may not be the book for you. But if you're familiar with Excel and looking for additional capabilities that Excel can't give you, then this book could be the perfect place to start.

I should also add here that as I write this in late 2019 I think Access fills a unique but shrinking role. When it was first released I would bet that there weren't a lot of off-the-shelf options available for building your own point of sale database or tracking customer contact information, and that Access was a good tool for filling that need.

But anymore I think there are a number of commercially-available solutions that do a better job and probably come with far less potential for error. So if you're a small business and looking to create a customer contact database or track your accounting information, I'd check the available off-the-shelf solutions first before I tried to create a custom Access database.

And if you're at a larger company, talk to your IT department before you use Access. You might be surprised what they already have available.

For example, many years ago I had to send out a questionnaire to five hundred brokerage firms about their business activities. That's something that if left to my own devices I might've done via a paper questionnaire and then tracked through Access. But it turned out my company had a very simple but effective software program that allowed them to build an online questionnaire to my specifications and export the results to an Excel spreadsheet.

So I know those types of solutions are out there and I would argue that they're probably easier to use than Access and less prone to data integrity issues.

Also, if you find yourself dealing with significant amounts of data then Access may not be advanced enough for what you need and you should explore more sophisticated options.

For example, I know just enough about the R programming language to know that I could probably write a script that would do in R what I currently do in Access for my sales tracking. And that if I were to do so it would require less time and effort each month for me to generate my reports. But right now the amount of data I'm working with doesn't require something that sophisticated. If I were dealing with millions of records each month, it might make sense to explore a better solution than Access.

At this point you may be wondering what I think Access actually is good for.

Where I see Access still having tremendous value is in taking custom data sets from different sources, combining that data, and then generating summary reports on that data.

For example, I sell my books through eleven different distributors. Access is perfect for combining the sales information across those eleven distributors into simple reports that let me see revenue, expenses, and profits by title, series, author, and genre.

There are pre-packaged commercial solutions out there for authors who use only one platform (Amazon) and other solutions for authors who use a handful of the largest distributors, but there are none that allow the level of customization I need.

Also, because the distributors I sell through don't always tell anyone before making changes to their reports, the available commercial solutions sometimes break unexpectedly. Not their fault—those changes break my Access database too—but that means it's possible for a user to not have access to reporting until those products are updated. (Or worse, they might miss a change and not even know it.) By creating a custom Access database that I control, I can fix my reports immediately and I know when something is off.

Also, with a custom database I can add new reports as needed. I'm not at the mercy of someone else's development schedule or choices.

Access is the perfect solution for creating that kind of database. And I expect it will continue to be so into the future.

So that's where I'm coming from in this book. And that's how I'll approach teaching you Access.

My goal in this book is to educate you enough so that you're able to upload either Excel or .csv files into your database, link them to one another, and then create select queries that combine information pulled from more than one data table or query at a time. And I'll be doing so with the perspective of an Excel user.

To make that happen we'll first discuss how Access databases work, the four main components of Access, the key differences I see between working in Access and Excel, and then how to complete basic tasks in Access as well as navigate through the various parts of Access.

Once we have that foundation established, we'll discuss the two ways to create tables, how to export an existing Access data table or query to Excel, how to add data to a table from an external Excel file, the most common field data types, table views, and how to amend data in a table.

We'll then discuss how to perform various tasks in tables and queries, such as selecting records or columns and changing row heights or column widths.

From there we'll cover select queries including how to create a basic detail query and how to create a basic summary query using only one table or query as the source. This will be done using the Query Wizard. We'll also cover the types of query views available and the Design View in particular.

Next we'll discuss table relationships and how to use them to create detail and summary queries that use more than one table or query as their source. And we'll discuss how to use basic criteria to narrow down the results in a query.

Finally we'll cover summary results, sorting data, and filtering data in tables and queries. And then we'll finish with a brief discussion about forms, reports, and printing.

By the time you're done with this book you should be able to comfortably navigate Access and work with tables and queries at a beginner level.

I want to give you enough information to get started in Access without overwhelming you, which means topics like how to customize forms and reports and how to create union or crosstab queries aren't covered here. Those topics along with others are covered in detail in Intermediate Access, the next book in this series.

If you are already familiar with another Microsoft Office product, like Excel, the beginning of this book may seem too simplistic to you because I am going to start at the beginning as if you know nothing about opening an Access database. But Access does differ from the other Office products in certain respects, so I'd still recommend skimming those sections.

Also, this book is written using Access 2013. That means all of the screenshots from the book and all of the navigation instructions are based on the 2013 version of Access. What I'm going to cover here should be mostly the same for all versions of Access from Access 2007 onward, but just be aware of that fact in case something doesn't look or work the same.

Alrighty then. Let's start with some basic terminology.

Basic Terminology

Before we get started, I want to make sure that we’re on the same page in terms of terminology. Some of this will be standard to anyone talking about Access and some of it is my personal quirky way of saying things, so best to skim through if nothing else.

Tab

I refer to the menu choices at the top of the screen (File, Home, Create, External Data, Database Tools, etc.) as tabs. If you click on one you’ll see that the way it’s highlighted sort of looks like an old-time filing system.

Each tab you select will show you different options. For example, in the image above, I have the Home tab selected and you can do various tasks such as change views, cut/copy/paste, sort and filter, refresh your data, add/save/delete a record, add a totals row, check spelling, and more. Other tabs give other options.

Click

If I tell you to click on something, that means to use your mouse (or trackpad) to move the cursor over to a specific location and left-click or right-click on the option. (See the next definition for the difference between left-click and right-click).

If you left-click, this selects the item. If you right-click, this generally creates a dropdown list of options to choose from. If I don't tell you which to do, left- or right-click, then left-click.

Left-click/Right-click

If you look at your mouse or your trackpad, you generally have two flat buttons to press. One is on the left side, one is on the right. If I say left-click that means to press down on the button on the left. If I say right-click that means press down on the button on the right.

Not all trackpads have the left- and right-hand buttons. In that case, you’ll basically want to press on either the bottom left-hand side of the trackpad or the bottom right-hand side of the trackpad.

Dropdown Menu

If you right-click on something, for example a field or table name, in Access you will see what I’m going to refer to as a dropdown menu. (Sometimes it will actually drop upward if you’re towards the bottom of the screen.)

A dropdown menu provides you a list of choices to select from like this one that you’ll see if you right-click on a field in a new table:

There are also dropdown menus available for some of the options listed under the tabs at the top of the screen. For example, if you go to the Home tab, you’ll see small arrows below or next to some of the options, like the View option and the Refresh All option on the Home tab. Clicking on those little arrows will give you a dropdown menu with a list of choices to choose from.

Expansion Arrows

I don’t know the official word for these, but you’ll also notice at the bottom right corner of most of the sections in each tab that there are little arrows. If you click on one of those arrows Access will bring up a more detailed set of options, usually through a dialogue box (which we’ll discuss next) or by adding another pane (which we'll define after that).

In the Home tab, for example, there are expansion arrows for Clipboard and Text Formatting. Holding your mouse over the arrow will give a brief description of what clicking on the expansion arrow will do like here for the Clipboard section on the Home tab:

Dialogue Box

Dialogue boxes are pop-up boxes that cover specialized settings. As just mentioned, if you click on an expansion arrow, it will often open a dialogue box that contains more choices than are visible in that section. When you click on the expansion arrow for the Text Formatting section of the Home tab, for example, that brings up the Datasheet Formatting dialogue box which looks like this:

While Access does have some dialogue boxes, they aren't near as common as in Excel. But you will see them for certain tasks like, for example, printing.

Panes

When you first open an Access database you will notice that there is a main workspace on the right-hand side, which opens with a new table, Table1. This takes up most of the screen.

On the left-hand side of that table, however, is what I'm going to refer to as a pane. In this case it's the All Access Objects pane. You can see the title at the top and it takes up about one-fifth of the left-hand side of the view area.

A pane is a separate section that contains information or options aside from what you see in the main workspace. (Panes often show up in PowerPoint as well.)

The All Access Objects pane is where you go to easily navigate between your tables, queries, forms, and reports. It can be minimized but not closed.

Other panes can be opened and closed as needed and will appear on either the left-hand side or the right-hand side of the main workspace depending on the pane.

To see an example of one that can be closed, click on the expansion arrow in the Clipboard section of the Home tab to open the Clipboard pane. It should open on the left side of the All Access Objects pane. Below I've zoomed in the view so you can see it clearly.

To close a pane, click on the X in the top right corner of the pane.

If instead of an X there is a double-arrow in the top right corner (like with the All Access Objects pane as you can see above) you can click on the double arrow to either minimize the pane or expand it. (Note that when what I refer to as the All Access Objects pane is minimized Access refers to it as the Navigation Pane. The name displays in the middle of the minimized space)

To change the width of a pane, hold your mouse over the inner edge of the pane until you see a double-sided arrow pointing left and right, left-click, and drag until the pane is your desired width.

Scroll Bar

Scroll bars allow you to see your data when there is sufficient data to take up more space than is currently available on the screen.

When you have enough tables, queries, reports, and forms, there will be a scroll bar visible on the right-hand side of the All Access Objects pane.

Also, when the data in your table, query, form, or report has more content than will fit on the screen, there will be scroll bars visible in the main workspace.

In the image above there are scroll bars on both the right-hand side and the bottom. The mouse (which is shown as