Hey Everyone (1 Viewer)

Hey Team,

I'm a security Manager that has been living and breathing off of Excel for the last several years. I actually just discovered Access and have been tinkering with it for about...oh...a week now. I am attracted to its instant results, professional layouts and minute notice reports. There is a lot about Access that I do not know how to do, or if it can do, but I appreciate your help with that.
I am a possible convert, but not there yet.

Welcome to AWF. Access has a pretty big learning curve if you want to get anywhere near it's potential. Word of caution - being great at Excel is actually not a good thing as you're likely to apply your Excel thinking to your db's and that would not be good.

There is a lot about Access that I do not know how to do, or if it can do, but I appreciate your help with that.

Click to expand...

Then I'll just copy and paste from my file that IMHO is required reading - unless you like creating problems for yourself.

Normalization is paramount.

Normalization Parts I, II, III, IV, and V
http://rogersaccessblog.blogspot.com/2017/03/what-is-normalization-part-i.html

and/or http://holowczak.com/database-normalization/

Entity-Relationship Diagramming: Part I, II, III and IV http://rogersaccessblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/entity-relationship-diagramming-part-i.html
How do I Create an Application in Microsoft Access? http://rogersaccessblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-do-i-create-application-in.html

Naming conventions
http://access.mvps.org/access/general/gen0012.htm
https://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=225837
What not to use in names - http://allenbrowne.com/AppIssueBadWord.html

About Auto Numbers
http://www.utteraccess.com/wiki/Autonumbers
http://access.mvps.org/access/general/gen0025.htm

The evils of lookup fields - http://access.mvps.org/access/lookupfields.htm
Table and PK design tips - http://www.fmsinc.com/free/newtips/primarykey.asp
About calculated table fields - http://allenbrowne.com/casu-14.html
About Multi Value Fields -http://www.mendipdatasystems.co.uk/multivalued-fields/4594468763

Hopefully all the links are OK

Welcome, prich0905.

Since you have been "living off Excel" for a while, you will find some incredibly big differences between Excel and Access. Access is more powerful for database operations and many other types of analysis, but Excel has its merits for certain types of analysis. The biggest issue will be breaking the Excel mind-set.

May I respectfully suggest that you look for posts by user Uncle Gizmo, who has some links to various tutorials related to the transition between the two utilities? There are some HUGE design mistakes that Excel users often make simply because they don't know or understand the differences between the two utilities. Nothing insurmountable - but different enough to be very important when starting out to design a project in Access.

EDIT: I see that Micron has chimed in with some good links. It looks like a lot, but with Access you can DO a lot. Chalk it up to "learning curve."

Hi. Welcome to AWF!