Microsoft access 2013 tutorial 6 how to#
Microsoft access 2013 tutorial 6 windows#

Microsoft access 2013 tutorial 6 how to#

After you understand how to use your database, you’ll be introduced to tools that let you modify its structure and appearance.īy the time you've finished reading this tutorial, you will be able to use a database with confidence. You will also learn how to sort, retrieve, and analyze this information by running queries.

As the tutorial goes on, you will learn how to enter information in several ways.

Microsoft access 2013 tutorial 6 windows#

You will become familiar with the structure of an Access database and learn how to navigate its various windows and the objects contained in it. The tutorial begins with a basic introduction to Access. It is designed for people who plan to use a pre-existing database, most likely in the workplace. This tutorial will not teach you how to build a database from scratch. Taking the Access 2013 tutorial What to expect from this tutorial All of these things would be difficult to accomplish in Excel, but in Access even complicated tasks can be simplified and made fairly user friendly. The fact that relational databases can handle information this way allows you to enter, search for, and analyze data in more than one table at a time. Simply put, relational databases can recognize what a human can: If the same words appear in multiple lists, they refer to the same thing. In Excel, you'd have to enter every single piece of information about a person or type of cookie each time you mentioned it because that database wouldn't be relational like an Access database. However, an Excel workbook wouldn’t.Įxcel would treat all of these things as distinct and unrelated pieces of information.

This relationship seems obvious, and a person would understand it right away. See how the third list uses words that appeared in the first two lists? A database is capable of understanding that the Dad and Oatmeal cookies in the Batches list are the same things as the Dad and Oatmeal in the first two lists. Because you're only making cookies you know the recipe for and you're only going to give them to your friends, this new list will get all of its information from the lists you made earlier. You decide to create a third list to keep track of the batches of cookies you make and who they’re for. To explore this idea, let's go back to the simple database with two lists: names of your friends, and the types of cookies you know how to make. A relational database is able to understand how lists and the objects within them relate to one another. We call a database like the ones you’ll work with in Access a relational database. However, the thing that really sets databases apart from any other way of storing data is connectivity. Non-numerical data plays a significant role in almost any database, and it's important to be able to sort and analyze it. If a database is essentially a collection of lists stored in tables and you can build tables in Excel, why do you need a real database in the first place? While Excel is great at storing and organizing numbers, Access is far stronger at handling non-numerical data, like names and descriptions. In fact, you could build a similar table in Excel. If you are familiar with other programs in the Microsoft Office suite, this might remind you of Excel, which allows you to organize data in a similar way. It contains two lists: a list of your friends, and a list of cookies. This is one of the simplest databases imaginable. For instance, if you like to bake you might decide to keep a database containing the types of cookies you know how to make and the friends you give these cookies to. This is true of all databases, from the simplest to the most complex. Then there's a list of past appointments, a list with medical history for each patient, a list of contact information, and so on. What lists are contained in a database like this? Well, to start with, there's a list of patients' names. Think about one of the databases we mentioned above: the database of patient information at a doctor's office. The easiest way to understand a database is to think of it as a collection of lists. Ever waited while a doctor's receptionist entered your personal information into a computer, or watched a store employee use a computer to see whether an item was in stock? Then you’ve seen a database in action. They're such a useful tool that you see them all the time.

Databases allow their users to enter, access, and analyze their data quickly and easily. A database is a collection of data that is stored in a computer system.