Access 2016 Essentials

Access is the database application within the Microsoft Office suite. Many businesses, large and small, use Access to store large amounts of information. Just like building a strong house, you must have a solid foundation. We start from the very beginning discussing how to plan a database, introducing basic terminology and key concepts of relational database design, and exploring the Access Interface. Then we dive more in depth into each object in an Access databases - tables, queries, forms, and reports. This series is targeted for users who want to get started in Access or users that want a refresher on Access essentials. Access is a Windows only product and only available as a local installation.

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to OfficeProTV. I'm your host, Vonne Smith, and this is the Access 2016 Essentials Course overview. And in this episode we're going to be reviewing well exactly what is this show going to be covering. Who is this show for? Do I need to know anything before I get started? And any extra tit bits along the way. So let's talk about topics that we are going to be covering this is an essential show, we started at very beginning of introducing different topics within Access, like what is a database? What does it mean to have a select query? How do I get around the interface of Access? Well, that's all covered in this introduction topic, or section of this particular show. Then we're gonna go ahead and get into creating tables, where all of your data is actually stored within your Access database. So we're gonna learn how to create tables, how to import information, whether from an Excel file or a CSV file. And we're also gonna be talking about the relationships that we have between our tables. Very important key concepts about designing a database. Then we're gonna move into creating queries or questions that we're going to be asking of our data, to be able to pull out that information. And within this particular topic, we're also gonna talk about some of the flaws that we have encountered or created, some little mistakes that we made in our database as we were designing this out and working with it. And be able to show you guys some of the mistakes we've made so you can learn from our mistakes, and be able to really solidify that foundational knowledge of proper database design. Then we move into making forms, this is where we could go ahead and input the information into our database, into our tables, how to create forms. Where we'll talk about controls and fields and how that maps out to our different tables. And then we'll get into reporting the data, generating reports, because everybody knows that they have that one boss that says, can you go ahead and give me that report by Friday, that would be great. So we're gonna go ahead and show you how to do that. Now this particular show is designated for a beginner user in Access, or maybe you have no prior knowledge of Access at any level, then this is the show for you. And I say all Officer users with a capital O, meaning the Office Suite. Not necessarily that you work in an office or not, like a physical location, but you are using the Office 365 Suite. Now a little caveat on this particular product here is that, Access is a Windows only product. They do not make Office or Access for Mac, so you will have to do that. So if you're on a Mac, you might wanna go look at something else on different shows on how you might wanna use it, cuz there is no equivalent there in this particular product. Now the prerequisites like I just said, you don't have to have any prior knowledge of Access. If you have some familiarity we say Excel. You're looking to maybe kinda go from Excel to Access then we would have some familiarity with that particular product which will help. And I actually use a lot of correlations between this product and Excel because I'm more of an Excel user. And then Ronnie, who's going to be the person we'll be seeing a lot of, and hearing him tell us all about Access. I'll try to make some of those correlations for you. But also having a basic understanding of the Windows environment will be helpful, so you know where the start button is, and things like that. Extra information, there's always other options. If we're right clicking on something, you could also probably double click somewhere else, or there's a button, there's multiple ways to get to the same place, in all of your Office products. So just keep that in mind, and you might develop one way that you like to go to get something rather than the way that we're showing you. So there's always different options, and we might not cover them all, cuz there's so many of them. Updates happen, yes this is a subscription based product, if you are using a subscription base. Of course, you could have a single, stand alone product as well. But if you are on that Office 365 subscription, you will have updates. And by the time that you're watching this program, you might have some updates on your application that we didn't have at the time of this recording. There might be a few things that are different here and there. Searching for answers, yep there's good old Oracle of the internet, you can go ahead and search for your answers either through Google or Bing, whatever search engine that you prefer. Also the Microsoft Office help files, they're actually very, very helpful, so definitely check that out. Everybody uses products differently, and that goes the same for Access. So how we're demonstrating the concept of Access with our particular database, might not be the exact database, or the reasons why you need to use Access. But we do try to take this from a very foundational level, of being able to explain the core concepts of this project, or this product, I should say, and that you can be able to translate. And as always, I always try to tell you all, have some fun with this, or at least have fun learning about this. We like to have fun, we like to keep it light, make some jokes. Me and Ronnie have a pretty good rapport there. We've known each other for a long time, so we like to kinda poke fun at each other here and there. SoI hope you have a good time while you're watching these episodes and hopefully, you can have a lot of fun with Access for yourself. So I'd like to talk to you guys little bit about how the exercise files are arranged in this particular show. It is slightly different from some of our other shows if you've seen like Artcell or Word, it's slightly different. We do have files that are associated with all of the episodes and lessons that we go through. However, we don't have the files individually for download on each episode. We put all of the files for the entire show in this particular course overview. So make sure you go ahead and download the episode files from this particular screen that you're looking at and be able to see them. So let me go head and show you and give you a little roadmap of where we're going. So once you download them, they will be a zipped file that you can unzip and I have a folder right here, that just has all of the files that we're going to be addressing. Some PDFs, some Access files, our database files, some Excel files, and I'm like gosh, I don't know which ones go with which. Well, just consult the guide. And I have made this into a PDF, and an Excel file. I'm gonna go ahead and open the PDF called Access 2016 Essentials Files Guide. And this goes ahead and maps out every single episode name that we have. You don't really don't have to worry about the numbers this is more for us and our internal numbering system. But take the name of the episode, and then the files that are associated with it. So you can see that the Database Terminology pt 2 is associated with the Database Terminology with Notes.pdf, and I have another one over here to the side, that will give you just a couple of extra notes in there. And as you can see, this kinda goes down through each one of our episodes. And then gives you which files that you need to look for within that folder, and how they're associated with each other and along the way. There are a few little things I wanted to point out that we do have some kinda stopping point, or some kinda checkpoints. Because this is a show that we intend to have you watch as a sequence. So it goes from show one all the way down, or episode one down through. If you're picking up on one particular episode individually, that's totally fine too. Just take notice that some of the episodes kind of build off of each other. So somethings that might be covered in the table relationships are piggybacking off of our creating tables, importing external data. So we do kind of use this, we talk about them being many theories within this particular show. So they are meant to be washed within like a whole topic from beginning to end. Do notice that some of the file names might be a little different from one to the other. For example, I have some ones that I have a starting file right here in the external data of the import and a pen. Cuz I created that after the episode, so you would have a file to follow up on with. But the file name in the episode, might not match that, and that's okay. And so you can see that we have to this point, this is where the file ends, then you get into queries. And then we have kind of some extra files and up to this point that's where this file will be, and so on and so forth. So, just consult this particular guide to go ahead and match up the different exercise files to the episodes. And then just as little note down here that I have for you guys is that, we did try very hard to make sure that the files do match, okay? But, and sometimes there might have like a couple extra things in there so you could see there has extra different objects compared to the episode files in the recordings, and they should be fine. You could see that between filming episodes, we do modify our files here and there to make sure that everything is working. And then we readjust them to be able to have you guys have a starting point of where to follow along. But just keep in mind that the findings might be different and, some of the episodes like I said before they do work off each and I do try to notate in those episodes. For example right here in our reports that, the reports part four is continuing the same example that we started in the part three file. So, just wanted to make a note of that and so you all are very aware of that. I've made this guide for you guys so go ahead and download those episodes. But that goes ahead and wraps up my overview of the course, and the overview of the exercise files. So I hope to see you very soon, and let's have some fun in Access. [MUSIC].