Access Database Management – isn’t it just best to use Excel all the time?
During our training courses over the years we’ve been asked several times when to use Access instead of Excel. The “isn’t it best to just use Excel for everything?” question can often be one on a number of peoples minds. Excel is a great package for use in a number of areas of businesses and with your day to day work (and it is often the most used package in a lot of companies) however sometimes Access can be the package that will stand up to the mark when the time comes compared to Excel.
As we all know Excel is great for calculations, charting and data analysing. It’s not so good at data validation or linking together different sets of data for report purposes. Here is where Access steps in!
Using Access Databases
Access databases consist ideally of a number of tables which contain primary keys which are then linked together in the form of Relationships. Once the relationships are constructed its possible to build forms, queries and reports across the tables in the Database. Queries are the prime way of extracting data across many tables in a sorted and filtered way. Reports are really smart looking and make queries look more presentable and easier to read and present to others.
If you wish to explore the power of Access databases then perhaps consider our two day course which covers the key functions of tables, relationships, queries, forms and reports. For more information you can see on our website, or please do not hesitate to contact us on our contact page with your query. If neither of those suit you, then feel free to just send us an email with your query to johnlegge@jplcomputer.co.uk.
You’ll be a database designer in no time at all!
If you liked this post, why not take a look at our previous one on tips in Outlook?