Microsoft Access

[juldea]

I feel like a failure. :P

On random inspiration this morning, I opened up Microsoft Access for the first time and began futzing around with it. Two hours and lots of experimentation later, I don't feel that I at all have a grasp on what it does or how to make it work like I want it. :(

This is unprecidented. Excel is my bitch, you see. I regularly decide I want to do something with Excel that I don't even know is possible, and with a short period of reading and testing, it bends to my will.

From what I know of Access, it'd be a much better tool for the invoice tracking/queries/etc I want to be able to do. I just... can't seem to find an intuitive starting place. :P

Heaven forbid I have to buy a manual!

Comments

[tpau]

i have a really big thick book on Access. you wnat to borrow it?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Is it a GOOD really big thick book?

[tpau]

descently so

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Then I'll borrow it, sure! :)

[baronbrian.livejournal.com]

Don't worry. My boss (who's a pretty smart guy) can make Excel sit up and dance but he has problems with Access.

[caltren.livejournal.com]

Well, it's important not to come at access from an excel frame of mind. They're quite different. Excel is a flat database. A spreadsheet where mostly you've got information that has a one-to-one relationship. You put data in it that relates to something (invoices and dollar figures for the day, for example), and that's fine.

With access though, you can make a parallel to multiple spreadsheets in a workbook, but things are mostly related to each other. Yes, there's one-one data, but there's one-many, many-many data relationships as well. You can take the spreadsheet from every day, load it into access, and then do an analysis of how many people bought widget A or B over x weeks. To even attempt that in excel, let alone simply/efficiently, with a lot of quick/easy web content, would be a lot harder, and for some things, almost impossible. This difference in their design means their basic philosophy of use is different. Excel is very much a 'get started and put in some data into a spreadsheet' oriented. Access is a relational database. Way different.

Hrm. Sorry--I'm sure you know all that. *blush*

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I do, and that's why I want to learn how to use it. Currently I keep monthly spreadsheets of invoices that cab companies send in that pretty much says "this invoice for this amount was payed by this account." I was thinking recently that I'd love to be able to look across these invoices to say, perhaps, "How much has this account spent over the past 4 months?" Currently I'd have to go about this the long way, and I'd love to instead have the computer do it for me (like it's supposed to!)